Hotels near delmar loop st louis

Aloha and welcome to the /r/OahuLounge ~ E Komo Mai!

2019.03.24 07:25 honolulu_oahu_mod Aloha and welcome to the /r/OahuLounge ~ E Komo Mai!

The O'ahu Lounge is a place for past, current and future visitors to the beautiful islands of Hawai'i.
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2019.03.24 11:19 honolulu_oahu_mod Aloha and welcome to the /r/WaikikiLounge ~ E Komo Mai!

The Waikīkī Lounge is a place for past, current and future visitors to the beautiful islands of Hawai'i.
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2019.08.22 04:25 honolulu_oahu_mod Aloha and welcome to /r/Kaimuki ~ E Komo Mai!

Aloha and welcome to /Kaimuki, a place for anything local, like news, pics, sports, events or just stop by, talk story. It's not a place for stink eye or downvote menehunes.
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2023.06.04 18:56 oycetheoyster Trip Recap 5/28-6/3

We spent six nights in New Orleans. Originally, we booked the Marriott off of Canal but had issues (broken toilet and no additional rooms) and thankfully was able to move across the street to the JW Marriott. It was so much nicer, newer and cleaner (thanks chase!)
Breakfast: Bearcat CBD: Really delicious. Had the cat daddy and the blue crab omelet. Great coffee. ~30 min wait but worth it
Willa Jean: Also very delicious. Had the crawfish roll and shrimp and grits. Lots of crawfish. If I had to nitpick, the shrimp was a little overcooked but still tasty
Beignets (fav to least fav order) 1. Cafe du Monde (French market): crispy, good texture, airy but not too airy, great ratio of powder sugar to beignet. This is what I think of when I think of a beignet. However, I would say the fry is inconsistent. You don’t always get crispy.
  1. Loretta’s: I’d describe this more as a toaster strudel style beignet. It’s more flaky. Delicious and crispy. It gets the 2nd spot bc when I think of beignet, I don’t expect flaky.
  2. Marriot Lounge: This was our dark horse. It was a random beignet we ate in the buffet lounge our first morning. We didn’t even take a picture. It scared us bc we had quite a few beignet duds for the first few days and thought this was our favorite for awhile. Good representation of a pillowy beignet. The sugar to beignet ratio was good. Missing some crispiness.
  3. Cafe du Monde City Park: We may have gotten a bad batch. Kinda denser and larger holes to the point where there was not much inside. Nice crispy crust though.
  4. Criollo at the hotel Monteleone:This was another toaster strudel type of beignet. Good but not crispy like Loretta’s.
  5. Cafe beignet Royal St: this is another example of a pillowy beignet but too much dough to sugar ratio. Tighter crumb. Didn’t feel like eating more than 1.
  6. The Vintage: I really was looking forward to this one. We may have gotten a bad batch, but it was literally empty inside. Like a shell of a beignet. It was a nice crispy crust though. Maybe would have been better to get a filled one.
Mains Willie Chicken Shack: ate this the first night since our flight was delayed. Freshly fried. Really great for late night.
Felix Lakefront: grilled oysters were good. We got a cup of gumbo and it was fine but forgettable.
High Hat: We ate here bc it was near cure. Really delicious. The gulf shrimp was one of our favorite bites from our trip. They make a good pie too.
Cochon: the bread and the sauce from the wood fired oysters was one of our top bites. Oysters themselves lacked some smoky flavor and were a bit overcooked.
Dakar: we went for Wednesday family night. Delicious seafood. Loved it. Went to second vine wine before dinner and they recommended us a great bottle of chenin blanc.
Compere Lapin: I love top chef and Nina but was a bit disappointed. We had to send back the tuna tartare bc it was too salty. I think they cure it. The second one was not much better and lacking acidity. Pig ears were also too salty. Pork belly and fried chicken with coconut grits were great. Could have used some heat. I found the pasta a little fishy but cooked well.
Gris gris: shrimp and grits were delicious. Whole red fish was ok, lacked seasoning, tomato sauce tasted like it came straight from the can. Great espresso martini.
Drinks: Jewel of the south: kinda hit or miss. Drinks were maybe overly complex where it just tasted like a good punch.
Cure: this was our favorite. Interesting and innovative cocktails but also delicious. Would go back.
French 75 bar: had a French 75 and matcha colada. It was good but nothing to write home about.
For gin fizz, we went to bar tonique and bourbon o bar. Bar tonique was better.
Overall, had an amazing trip. We had 120+ bookmarks and only made a small dent. We at so much good food, and loved walking and exploring. This was mostly a food post but just wanted to mention that city park was amazing. The sculpture garden is so good. Can’t wait to come back.
submitted by oycetheoyster to AskNOLA [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 17:13 AlexRD19 NLMB Fallen Members Part 6/The War With PocketTown

NLMB Fallen Members Part 6/The War With PocketTown
2019 was a hard year for NLMB, losing members back to back to different opps and starting a new bloody war with DeathRow, in 2020 the war will slow down due to a lot of factors. Most members who put in work in that war will get locked up and NLMB will focus on other opps just like DeathRow, we will come back in the summer of 2022 to that beef.

Willie "Ghost 🕊️" Coker

08/31/2019
I didn't had space to include Ghost in the last part so i decided to do it here, it's not that important to the NLMB/DeathRow beef so it's ok if i include it at the beginning.
Ghost also known as Rat was a respected OG from GME, i am not sure if he was the target or not but DeathRow and Lakeside dissed him a lot, Fa Fa Fa said they killed Ghost and ever since then GME didn't do anything for him, ignore the video from the store, that's not Ghost, it's a mistake by the one who made the post, the one who died in the store was an innocent as far as i know and it happen way after Ghost died. This happen in the same month DeathRow killed Willie, DeathRow was sliding a lot in 2019.
Ghost was outside with multiple people in his own hood when shots rang out from an unknown direction, he was shot multiple times in the chest and he died at the hospital.
"Ghost got hit up" 0:58

Michael "Aero 🕊️" Portis

01/05/2020
One of the reasons i believed Savo 🕊️ was killed by kings was Aero death, months after Savo died, Aero was sliding with FatLord 🔒 on some kings, which made sense at least during that time, Savo died in a hood cool with the kings, Aero is sliding on the kings, it was making sense into my head that Aero died trying to get revenge for Savo + that's what i was told, again i was wrong. As i said in my previous post, Savo was killed by NLMB, Aero was just a hothead who was sliding on his opps, nothing weird.
Aero was on the frontline and did a lot of dirt for DeathRow, he earned the nickname "23" for a reason, in my previous post i put a screenshot with Fa Fa Fa straight up saying Aero killed G Dottie 🕊️. I know a lot of people believed Aero killed an innocent, but people told me that Garcia 🕊️ was a known king, why would Aero and FatLord slide on some innocents and specifically target them?
Aero and FatLord were driving a turquoise SUV when they made a U-turn at the end of the street and parked in the block close to a king hood, both got out of the SUV with armed 9-mm handguns and approached Garcia and his neighbor as they were outside talking, they opened fire hitting the neighbor in the arm and hitting Garcia multiple times, Garcia returned fire with his own weapon striking Aero multiple times who died at the scene, FatLord was also shot multiple times, FatLord left Aero there and went to a hospital with the SUV in the same clothes that CPD saw on the footage. Garcia was pronounced dead at the hospital, police recovered 19 9-mm shell casings and 10 .40-caliber shell casings from the crime scene.
This is a very controversial situation because at first, people said after FatLord recovered from his wounds, he told the police what happen and also snitched on BD 🕊️ but now they saying free him, they saying that someone else ratted and not him, but according to this article, CPD is using FatLord as a source, FatLord was the one who allegedly was the driver on the Willie hit, FatLord is still locked up so who knows.
The scanner also confirms that they was sliding on some kings because they was having problems lately, it could be possible that some kings gave the location of Savo to NLMB, Savo was killed right at his home so NLMB probably got the drop from someone.
NLMB and ABK will diss Aero hard because he killed G Dottie, someone also recorded Aero on the ground, which was heavily mocked by his opps.
"Lil Aero a dumbass got hit on a hit" 0:23

Tristan "Tedo G 🕊️" Rogers

04/05/2020
NLMB first loss in 2020 but not because of gun violence, Tedo was from the MuskegonBoyz clique, he was killed by a car in DucciWay 🔱 hood, there is not a lot to say about him, he was a respected OG who was either related to Kobe 🕊️ or close to him.

Shianne "Anna 🕊️" Reynolds

04/19/2020
Anna was a very loved member from MTG 079 now more known as BiyoBlock, she was Biyo 🕊️ sister, at first people believed that she was not gangbanging but that's false, there is a lot of captions with her saying she was using guns to slide, i don't think she was active when she died in that life and she probably was not the target either. However, she probably was active in the past and as we all know, the past is catching up to you, her vigil was also shot, allegedly by NLMB again.
What i know is this, allegedly NLMB saw some MTG 079 members in traffic in SirconnCity 🔱 hood, they sped up behind them and shot the whole car, Anna was just unlucky since she was in the car with them, she was hit in the head and CPD pronounced her dead at the scene. This was one of the first getback NLMB got for Capo, but it will not stop here, NLMB will get more getback for Capo months later.
2020 was a hard year for MTG 079, they lost 4 members, Anna 🕊️, Pook 🕊️ who was not killed by any opps, LB 🕊️ an original who was also close to Biyo, LB was killed in DrillCity 📶🔱🅱️ hood, last one is Jeezy Snow 🕊️, we will get later to him.

Anthony "C-Note 🕊️" Smith

04/27/2020
C-Note was an OG from NLMB, to be more specific he was from the MuskegonBoyz clique, from what i know he passed away from natural causes, nothing to do with gun violence. He was born in 1985 so he was old compared to a lot of main members from MuskegonBoyz clique like G Farro for example, you could say he was from that White Folks generation.

Junius "BoBo 🕊️" Thurston

05/07/2020
BoBo was a very loved member from ABK, he was one of the main faces from there. BoBo was also a rapper, one of his best songs Pigs Hot where you can see a lot of ABK members including Yogi 🕊️, BoBo was close to NLMB as well, he did a song with Juvie and before his death you could see him around G Herbo.
BlackMobb was having a field day when BoBo was killed, even though BoBo left that life behind while starting a truck company, it's not like your opps will forgive you or forget that you did dirt in the streets or hurt their people, that shit is stucked until you die, even if you are 30, 40, as long as you put yourself in danger(go back to the city) you can get killed anywhere.
BoBo exit his car and went to a gas station in a relatively safe area far away from any hood, a black Audi pull up and a rear passenger open fire, he ran north from the station but then a gunman got out of the car and chased after him, firing more shots. BoBo collapsed and the gunman caught up to him standing over him and fired more shots, BoBo was pronounced dead at the hospital, police said he was shot multiple times.
BlackMobb were not the only ones having a field day with his death, PocketTown also dissed him:
"BoBo got his ass smoked, 20 bullets took his soul" 2:45
It is sad because BlackMobb and ABK were like this, but friends are turning to enemies and both sides lost main members in this war.

Lee "KTS Rio 🕊️" Cameron

07/12/2020
If you follow the drill scene, then you know who was KTS Rio, one of the main faces from PocketTown and Lil Los 🔒 little brother, he was a huge loss for PocketTown, after his death a lot of stuff went down.
Rio was driving a vehicle with two other teenagers near a gas station in KakiWorld 🔱🅱️⭐️✊🏿 hood when a silver SUV pulled up and someone inside started shooting, Rio was shot multiple times and he was pronounced dead at the hospital. The 14-year-old boy was shot in the back and a 17-year-old boy was hit in the right arm, both were taken to the hospital in good condition.
After his death PocketTown goes by "RioGang" in his honour, Rio was also one of their main rappers, one of his most known song is NLMBK, Faro dissed him in a song after he died:
"Rio got hit and they left his ass twitching" 0:38
"Rio got hit, y'all ain't get your getback" 1:05
A lot of people are saying NLMB killed KTS Rio but if you watch Freeband BoBo 🕊️ video that CH88 made, it is very clear that NLMB didn't do anything to Rio, because the war started when Lil Greg 🕊️ was killed, that's also what BoBo said. The beef was not serious until Lil Greg died, BoBo also said the whole war started because of a bitch, Lil Greg wanted to call his guys to kill BoBo because of a girl. Feel free to watch the video, it's explaining a lot of stuff.
Remember there is a difference between "twitter beef" like disses and blood beef, KTS Dre did dirt on NLMB but he did that for Lakeside while PocketTown was his second hood(he started to claim PocketTown after KTS Von died), so Lil Greg was the first guy to die in that beef, we will get later to him.
Now honestly it is not known who killed KTS Rio, but one of the most plausible theory is that SirconnCity killed him, months after KTS Rio died, PocketTown lost KDawg 🕊️, another top member while sliding on SirconnCity hood, his article doesn't mention anything about sliding but both sides said that.
"We doing hits without hoodies and masks, Rio got hit, he got stretched like an elastic" 1:08
"KDawg got hit on a hit, he dead" 0:24
They are main opps but since PocketTown top members were sliding, i think that means something, especially after Rio died.
This won't stop at KTS Rio, this year would be the most hardest year for PocketTown, they will lose 6 members in one year and they was all top members, but not all of them were killed by opps.
Big Glizzy/Lil James 🕊️ (June 07 2020), killed at a party in Robbins, a suburb of Chicago.
KTS Rio 🕊️ (July 12 2020), KDawg 🕊️ (September 27 2020), Nuke 30 🕊️ (November 25 2020), killed OT, LA Glizzy/Lil Ant 🕊️ (January 12 2021), killed OT, Killa Spook 🕊️ (March 26 2021), we will get later to Killa Spook.
"They lost 6 niggas in one year, tryna make the rest of them disappear" 1:53

Antoine "BT 🕊️" Rose

08/22/2020
BT was a very loved member from NLMM and 358Gang, he claimed both sets, he was also close to NLMB, one of the reasons he died. Even though NLMB and 358Gang are opps, as i said in my previous parts, NLMM was always a set focusing on money, they was never known to slide like that, so that's probably why he was close to NLMB and cool with NLMB opps, 358Gang. BT also appeared on the Maurice show.
I think everyone knows that Fa Fa Fa straight up said they killed BT, so why they killed him? Well even though BT was not involved in their beef, it doesn't matter, he was close to NLMB and 358Gang killed Mook 🕊️ in 2019, so DeathRow got their getback for him. I don't think BT was the specific target because the shooting occured in TheBush 👑🦁 territory, which are opps to DeathRow. BT was shot in the head and in the abdomen, CPD pronounced him dead at the scene, a 32 year old man was also shot in the abdomen and in the leg, he was taken to the hospital in critical condition.

Sean "Cello Da Shoota 🕊️" Wilson

09/07/2020
There was a lot of back and forth between NoGood and NLMB, mainly because NLMB killed Montae 🕊️ and it was forever stuck there, even though NoGood and NLMB are old opps, that beef was really inactive compared to Lakeside for example, but this all changed when Montae was killed, Montae was very loved by NoGood and like Jeff Fort said "there is not going to be any killing without killing" Cello was not really a main face from NLMB, he was from the NoLimit clique but his original hood was JBG 🔱 also known as MoneGang.
Cello was driving with someone else in the car in NoGood ⭐️✊🏿 hood, Jay Savage and Deonte 🔒 fired shots and the person in the backseat fired back, hitting one of them in the forearm, Cello was hit in the neck and died at the hospital, the other person was listed in good condition after being shot in his thigh, he has a license to carry his gun. Jay Savage and Deonte were both charged with his murder, both were from NoGood and close to Montae.

Deshawn "Jeezy Snow 🕊️" Fletcher

10/15/2020
Jeezy was in ABK 4️⃣🍸⭐️✊🏿🔱 hood driving his car when Mally 🔒 opened fire from the sunroof of a silver Chrysler 300, he was shot multiple times in the head, neck and upper torso, he died at the hospital two days later. There is a lot of contradiction of the car used in the murder, what we know for sure is that Mally shot from the sunroof. Mally also searched the murder on google to see if Jeezy died.
This was a a crazy hit for many reasons, one of them is that Lil Wet was driving the car, Lil Wet did this two months after he beat his quadruple murder case, the case is complicated but to this day Mally is still locked up for it. The full foia if you want to read more, from what i know the case is very strong against Mally but let's be real, Lil Wet beat a quadruple murder, everything is possible in Chicago, so i won't be surprised if he is beating it.
Lil Wet also hinted in his song "Nun Stop" about the hit, the music video was deleted or made private, but the audio version is still up.
"Gotta ride for my gang, Steph got the wheel, Lil Mally might come out the roof " 0:44
Jeezy was actually very close to DoggPound 🅱️, you can see him around them in old videos and i think he was related to some members from there too, i am not sure if he was claiming DoggPound at one point but members from there still say rip to him, again it doesn't mean every DoggPound member was close to him. It is a complicated situation but this was another getback NLMB got for Capo, a top member from MTG 079 and very loved.

Gregory "Lil Greg 🕊️" Jackson III

01/28/2021
The death that started all and guess what caused this? Well if you didn't guess it, it was a bitch, Lil Greg 🕊️ got into his feelings because BoBo 🕊️ was messing with a girl that he liked so when Lil Greg saw him, he tried to get the green light from other members to come and kill him right there, allegedly NLMB told him BoBo is not an opp and that he is staying out of the way, Lil Greg tried to call other members but it was too late.
PocketTown members got the drop from BoBo and went to kill Lil Greg who was in a barbershop far away from EastSide, Lil Don 🔒 walked up to him and shot Lil Greg in the face inside the barbershop, he was pronounced dead shortly after at the hospital, CK was actually charged because they found him in the same car that was used in the murder, he stayed solid and beat the case, CK was the one driving.
Lil Greg was a very loved member from NLMB and a main face from there, he was from the MuskegonBoyz clique but very close to G Herbo and even celebrities like 21 Savage paid respects to him, he was respected because he was a trapper making money from drugs to raise his kids, his death hurt a lot of people and you could say that his death made "DrenchGang" more famous because the getback was huge in terms of impact on the media, i am of course speaking about KTS Dre, his death was international news because of the way he died + Killa Spook, we will get later to them.
"Me and Gregg was sharin' clothes, but we weren't really bros" 0:18
"Lil Greg died, that started some shit, but how many checked after broski got hit?" 0:36 he is also upping 4 fingers, which is probably a reference to Killa Spook, KTS Dre, BoBo and probably Lil Don from PaxTown.
Moowop 🔒 also confirmed 3 opps died for Lil Greg, again most likely a reference to Killa Spook, KTS Dre and BoBo. Lil Don was also shot multiple times but he survived
NLMB was hurt but the opps were dissing Lil Greg hard, especially Lil Don:
Lil Don called Lil Greg biggest score of 2021
This started a new bloody war in the EastSide which caused a lot of damage, members getting locked up, members getting killed, members getting shot and so on, PocketTown was also unlucky to get hit with a "RICO" and most of their top members got locked up, there is barely any main faces out there besides Denny G and Lil Ant, they also have internal beef now.
The indictment also mentions they found the gun which was used in Lil Greg murder, the whole situation was fucked up for PocketTown, they lost like 10 members to this indictment + Lil Don got locked up + internal beef, the whole hood was hit hard by this indictment and a lot of "snitching" rumours are in the air.
The members who got locked up are Lil Rah 🔒, EJ(he was released), Rello 🔒, Dreski 🔒 MT Larry🔒 who actually shot back when Spook died, Corey Got Clout 🔒, PacMigo 🔒, Dwight 🔒 and DreadHead Larry 🔒

Dante "Killa Spook 🕊️" Thomas

03/26/2021
Killa Spook was like a leader in PocketTown, he had a lot of respect and his name says it all "Killa Spook" it's not a name you earn for doing nothing, he was a known killer who did a lot for PocketTown, him and KTS Von 🕊️ went to slide on Lamron in the past, he was very active, him and Denny G were sliding on SirconnCity as well.
Spook 🕊️ was partying with a lot of members inside StainCity🔱⭐️✊🏿 hood, it was a party for their fallen member KDawg 🕊️ who was killed sliding on SirconnCity in 2020, two shooters(this might be PocketTown shooting back but i personally think those are the offenders), NLMB and GME got the drop from a bitch and shot the whole party up, Killa Spook was shot by a stray bullet through a window, he was pronounced dead at the scene, Lord was shot in the head and he was taken to the hospital in critical condition, Denny G was taken to the hospital in critical condition and he recovered after some time, other members got shot as well but it was nothing serious like the ones i mentioned above.
Right after the party got shot up, PocketTown went to slide on NLMB and hit someone in the leg, there are a lot of things that points NLMB for doing this hit but it is confirmed that GME was also involved, Lil B from GME was arrested by CPD with the car used in the murder, he was released because CPD didn't had proof that he did the murder.
There are many names around Spook death, Faro, Lil Ro, Twino 🕊️, EMoe from GME, 7Moe 🕊️ from GME, it is not known exactly who killed Spook but it is hard to tell, what should be confirmed for sure is that it was a NLMB/GME hit, even CPD and FBI believes that. In case you guys don't know, FBI was trying to build a RICO but their main suspect Max 🕊️ was killed, so i think the case is really not that strong anymore. I do think FBI is monitoring what is going on between NLMB and PocketTown now.
PocketTown was hurt to the core by his death, NLMB and GME were dissing like crazy and celebrating Lil Greg a lot, it's a lot of disses that i am sure most of you saw, if you want way more details, watch CH88 video.

Londre "KTS Dre 🕊️" Sylvester

07/10/2021
Dre was getting out of prison after his fiancee paid his $5,000 bond on Friday, for some reason Dre decided to leave only on Saturday, what Dre didn't knew is that his decision will cost him his life and potentially the life of two other innocent females. Dre was shot around 64 times by multiple shooters from two different vehicles far away from EastSide in every side of his body, a 60 year old female was shot in the knee and a 35 year old female suffered a graze to her mouth while walking by, both were taken to the hospital in good condition. Dre was DOA and his death will have a huge impact in the streets, after his death the president of America, Joe Biden, was forced to do a meeting to slow the violence in Chicago, this was because his death had an immense impact in the international news because of the way that he died.
I would leave in the comments a list of some the countries news speaking about KTS Dre, because it would take too much space in the post.
Dre was an upcoming rapper in the drill scene, his most famous song being a feature with Rio called "NLMBK Pt. 2" but in the drill scene he mostly became known for punching Kyro, one of the many reasons Kyro diss him a lot. Dre was very active in the streets before his death, he did a lot of dirt and a lot of his opps wanted him gone. Dre was also suspected by CPD for killing Magic 🕊️ in 2019. He was originally from LakeSide but he started to claim PocketTown after the death of his brother in 2015, he is what people believe Von was, don't get me wrong, Von was active in the streets but Dre was something else.
I heard many names around Dre death, Faro, the DrenchGang Twins, Moowop, Kyro, Lil Hot, honestly i am not sure who killed Dre but NLMB and even PocketTown/LakeSide made it known who did it on social media. Faro being pretty clear that this was a getback for Lil Greg.
Losing so many people in such a short time affected PocketTown in many ways, a lot of them decided to step down because when shit gets real, you need to think about your life too, most of them have families, it might be a coward way but can you blame them? 10 members locked up for indictment, 9 top members killed between 2020-2022, Denny G was almost killed, Meechie was almost killed, Lil Don got locked up, Lil Art barely survived after being shot 20 times, Lord was left in critical condition, this is the worst period for PocketTown and Lil Don also confirmed that his people are scared and he only got four guys who are willing to slide.
Sadly the ones who will suffer the most is the family, his mom was devastated that she can't even give him a proper funeral because of the way that he died.

Christopher "Gucci 🕊️" Daniels

08/05/2021
Gucci was near the sidewalk in GhettoWorld 4️⃣🍸 hood when a vehicle passed by and someone fired shots at him, he was shot in the chest and he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
This is one month after Dre was killed, Gucci was a member from the MuskegonBoyz clique, i didn't saw PocketTown or LakeSide celebrating anything, in fact they still say "getback got no date" for Spook and Dre, it might be other opps that NLMB have, remember NLMB beefs with 30+ sets, it could also be personal beef, mistaken identity and so on.

Felder "Stro Dolla 🕊️" Tatum Jr.

08/15/2021
Stro Dolla was with a group of people inside GottiWorld 🔱 hood when someone opened and hit him in the chest, he was pronounced dead at the hospital, a 34 year old woman was also shot in the leg, she was taken to the hospital in good condition. Again i don't think he was the target but who knows, i didn't saw any opps celebrating, Stro Dolla was claiming NLMM but he was close to NLMB.He was also close to BT 🕊️ who was killed in 2020 by DeathRow, he was also a rapper, most likely Stro Dolla was just at the wrong time, wrong place, to my knowledge GottiWorld and NLMM or NLMB don't have beef. GottiWorld are actually opps to PocketTown.
submitted by AlexRD19 to Chiraqhits [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 17:00 _call-me-al_ [Sun, Jun 04 2023] TL;DR — This is what you missed in the last 24 hours on Reddit

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worldnews

Chinese warship nearly hits U.S. destroyer in Taiwan Strait during joint Canada-U.S. mission
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Le Pen’s far right served as mouthpiece for the Kremlin, says French parliamentary report
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Lecture on Holocaust in Poland canceled after far-right lawmaker storms podium
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news

Clumps of 5,000-mile seaweed blob bring flesh-eating bacteria to Florida
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Tennessee federal judge rules 'drag ban' is unconstitutional
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2 young boys killed by gunfire were playing with kittens in yard, Pennsylvania officials say
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science

Study supports the use of anti-poverty programmes such as cash transfers to improve population health. Researchers found that cash transfer programmes were associated with significant reductions in mortality among children under five years of age and women.
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Escalated police stops of Black men are linguistically and psychologically distinct in their earliest moments
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People with heightened sexual nostalgia tend to also have heightened sexual satisfaction, according to new research. The results indicate that the positive association between sexual nostalgia and satisfaction is particularly strong among insecurely attached individuals.
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space

Milky Way over a Turquoise Wonderland. Credits: Petr Horálek / Institute of Physics in Opava.
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Jupiter seen from the James Webb Space Telescope
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NASA's Mars helicopter is somehow still flying - and playing hide-and-seek
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Futurology

Delegates working to end global plastics pollution agree to craft a draft treaty
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Artificial Intelligence Will Entrench Global Inequality - The debate about regulating AI urgently needs input from the global south.
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Experts issue a dire warning about AI and encourage limits be imposed
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AskReddit

If your penis made a noise every time it got hard, what would you want the noise to be?
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What’s something (besides your phone) that you take with you everywhere?
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What will always be dirty no matter how often it's cleaned?
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todayilearned

TIL that Steve Jobs is buried in an unmarked grave
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TIL that an American POW in World War 2 was questioned about US atomic bombs after the bombing of Hiroshima. He told them he didn't know anything about that, but when they threatened to kill them, he "revealed" they had hundreds and that Tokyo and Kyoto were next.
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TIL that the legs of the 630 foot 192 m) Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO had to be built with a 1/64” (0.4 mm) tolerance so that they would meet at the top. Several filmmakers documented the entire construction in hope that the legs wouldn’t meet.
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dataisbeautiful

[OC] The entire history of Premier League teams in one chart ⚽️📈
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More than 50% of Vienna's Area is closer than 2km to a metro station [OC]
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[OC] A map of when same sex marriage legalized in each US state.
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Cooking

Why is pita in Greece nothing like pita in the US? Am I missing something?
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What can an air fryer do that an oven can’t?
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Want to make queso that's dippable regardless of temperature, like the store-bought stuff? Use sodium citrate and corn starch.
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food

[homemade] lemon curd and blueberry pancakes.
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[I ate] pulpitos
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[homemade] cheddar cheese biscuits
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movies

Walt Disney's Pixar Targets 'Lightyear' Execs Among 75 Job Cuts
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Contact (1997)
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What is one seemingly insignificant scene or character in a movie that you just can't get out of your mind?
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Art

Touched A Nerve, Jon Silent (Me), Ink and Acrylic, 2023
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Pluto, Dracopuella (me), digital, 2023
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Middle of nowhere, Naif(me), Pixelart, 2023
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television

Julie Plec and More WGA Members Detail Writers Strike Negotiations, Demand Streamers to Release Ratings: ‘We’re Mad’
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‘Full Monty’ Actor Reveals He Was Sacked From Disney TV Series After A Female Runner Saw Him Naked In Trailer
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'House of the Dragon’ Star Olivia Cooke Is Totally Fine if You Don’t Like Alicent: ‘That’s the Beauty of What We Do’
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pics

Senator John Fetterman at Pride parade.
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Reunion of the cast of The Mighty Ducks
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My parents 46 year old blender still works like new
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gifs

Paula Abdul fatality
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Nest with a 360° view
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Just lay back and relax
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educationalgifs

mildlyinteresting

I’m at the NYC Macys and the escalator is made out of wood.
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A small local movie theater me uses reusable metal bowls for the popcorn
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Rabdomly found a TARDIS in somebody's front yard.
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interestingasfuck

*Squirrel trying to fake an injury *
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Man puts 10ft buggy wheels on a Tesla and drives it upside down
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Never Forget what happened in China 34 years ago: Remembering the fearless Demonstrators at the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests
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funny

Thats not why you get cats
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One of them is very smart
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Cat carries mouse to food bowl
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aww

Potato requires belly scratches
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Cute Child Comforts Adorable, Nervous, Puppy
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Puppy fall asleep during the meditation session.
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Get this as a daily email!
submitted by _call-me-al_ to RedditTLDR [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 11:19 Tigrannes On this day in History, June 4

On this day in History, June 4
TODAY IN HISTORY June 4
Early Modern World
1411 – King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the people of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon as they had been doing for centuries.
1561 – The steeple of St Paul's, the medieval cathedral of London, is destroyed in a fire caused by lightning and is never rebuilt.
1615 – Siege of Osaka: Forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu take Osaka Castle in Japan.
1745 – Battle of Hohenfriedberg: Frederick the Great's Prussian army decisively defeated an Austrian army under Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine during the War of the Austrian Succession.
1760 – Great Upheaval: New England planters arrive to claim land in Nova Scotia, Canada, taken from the Acadians.
Revolutionary Age
1783 – The Montgolfier brothers publicly demonstrate their montgolfière (hot air balloon).
1784 – Élisabeth Thible becomes the first woman to fly in an untethered hot air balloon. Her flight covers four kilometres (2.5 mi) in 45 minutes, and reached 1,500 metres (4,900 ft) altitude (estimated).
1792 – Captain George Vancouver claims Puget Sound for the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1802 – King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia abdicates his throne in favor of his brother, Victor Emmanuel.
1812 – Following Louisiana's admittance as a U.S. state, the Louisiana Territory is renamed the Missouri Territory.
1825 – General Lafayette, a French officer in the American Revolutionary War, speaks at what would become Lafayette Square, Buffalo, during his visit to the United States.
1855 – Major Henry C. Wayne departs New York aboard the USS Supply to procure camels to establish the U.S. Camel Corps.
1859 – Italian Independence wars: In the Battle of Magenta, the French army, under Louis-Napoleon, defeat the Austrian army.
1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops evacuate Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River, leaving the way clear for Union troops to take Memphis, Tennessee.
1876 – An express train called the Transcontinental Express arrives in San Francisco, via the First transcontinental railroad only 83 hours and 39 minutes after leaving New York City.
1878 – Cyprus Convention: The Ottoman Empire cedes Cyprus to the United Kingdom but retains nominal title.
1896 – Henry Ford completes the Ford Quadricycle, his first gasoline-powered automobile, and gives it a successful test run.
1912 – Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.
1913 – Emily Davison, a suffragist, runs out in front of King George V's horse at The Derby. She is trampled, never regains consciousness, and dies four days later.
World Wars
1916 – World War I: Russia opens the Brusilov Offensive with an artillery barrage of Austro-Hungarian lines in Galicia.
1917 – The first Pulitzer Prizes are awarded: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall receive the first Pulitzer for biography (for Julia Ward Howe). Jean Jules Jusserand receives the first Pulitzer for history for his work With Americans of Past and Present Days. Herbert B. Swope receives the first Pulitzer for journalism for his work for the New York World.
1919 – Women's rights: The U.S. Congress approves the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees suffrage to women, and sends it to the U.S. states for ratification.
1919 – Leon Trotsky bans the Planned Fourth Regional Congress of Peasants, Workers and Insurgents.
1920 – Hungary loses 71% of its territory and 63% of its population when the Treaty of Trianon is signed in Paris.
1928 – The President of the Republic of China, Zhang Zuolin, is assassinated by Japanese agents.
1932 – Marmaduke Grove and other Chilean military officers lead a coup d'état establishing the short-lived Socialist Republic of Chile.
1939 – The Holocaust: The MS St. Louis, a ship carrying 963 German Jewish refugees, is denied permission to land in Florida, in the United States, after already being turned away from Cuba. Forced to return to Europe, more than 200 of its passengers later die in Nazi concentration camps.
1940 – World War II: The Dunkirk evacuation ends: the British Armed Forces completes evacuation of 338,000 troops from Dunkirk in France. To rally the morale of the country, Winston Churchill delivers, only to the House of Commons, his famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of Midway begins. The Japanese Admiral Chūichi Nagumo orders a strike on Midway Island by much of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
1942 – World War II: Gustaf Mannerheim, the Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Army, is granted the title of Marshal of Finland by the government on his 75th birthday. On the same day, Adolf Hitler arrives in Finland for a surprise visit to meet Mannerheim.
1943 – A military coup in Argentina ousts Ramón Castillo.
1944 – World War II: A hunter-killer group of the United States Navy captures the German Kriegsmarine submarine U-505: The first time a U.S. Navy vessel had captured an enemy vessel at sea since the 19th century.
1944 – World War II: The United States Fifth Army captures Rome, although much of the German Fourteenth Army is able to withdraw to the north.
Cold War
1961 – Cold War: In the Vienna summit, the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sparks the Berlin Crisis by threatening to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany and ending American, British and French access to East Berlin.
1967 – Seventy-two people are killed when a Canadair C-4 Argonaut crashes at Stockport in England.
1970 – Tonga gains independence from the British Empire.
1975 – The Governor of California Jerry Brown signs the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act into law, the first law in the United States giving farmworkers collective bargaining rights.
1977 – JVC introduces its VHS videotape at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. It will eventually prevail against Sony's rival Betamax system in a format war to become the predominant home video medium.
1979 – Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings takes power in Ghana after a military coup in which General Fred Akuffo is overthrown.
1983 – Gordon Kahl, who killed two US Marshals in Medina, North Dakota on February 13, is killed in a shootout in Smithville, Arkansas, along with a local sheriff, after a four-month manhunt.
1986 – Jonathan Pollard pleads guilty to espionage for selling top secret United States military intelligence to Israel.
1988 – Three cars on a train carrying hexogen to Kazakhstan explode in Arzamas, Gorky Oblast, USSR, killing 91 and injuring about 1,500.
1989 – In the 1989 Iranian Supreme Leader election, Ali Khamenei is elected as the new Supreme Leader of Iran after the death and funeral of Ruhollah Khomeini.
1989 – The Tiananmen Square protests are suppressed in Beijing by the People's Liberation Army, with between 241 and 10,000 dead (an unofficial estimate).
1989 – Solidarity's victory in the 1989 Polish legislative election, the first election since the Communist Polish United Workers Party abandoned its monopoly of power. It sparks off the Revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe.
1989 – Ufa train disaster: A natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia, kills 575 as two trains passing each other throw sparks near a leaky pipeline.
Modern World
1996 – The first flight of Ariane 5 explodes after roughly 37 seconds. It was a Cluster mission.
1998 – Terry Nichols is sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.
2005 – The Civic Forum of the Romanians of Covasna, Harghita and Mureș is founded.
2010 – Falcon 9 Flight 1 is the maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 40.
Featured
1989: The Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, China, reach their peak as Chinese troops and riot police are deployed to suppress the pro-democracy movement.
The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, during 1989. Troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks fired at the demonstrators and those trying to block the military's advance into Tiananmen Square. The protests started on 15 April and were forcibly suppressed on 4 June when the government sent the People's Liberation Army to occupy parts of central Beijing. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to several thousand, with thousands more wounded.
submitted by Tigrannes to Historycord [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 06:48 MissxDiagnosis Looking for roommate or advice

Just moved to St Louis… drove 13 hours today just to arrive to a shattered window from a bullet in my bedroom at my furnished finder and dirty crumb filled sheets and bugs on the ground in the living room. I also knew this was a multi room apartment but I was told someone had just moved out and I was going to be by myself. But, actually another girl had moved in today. I was fine with the girl being there, her and her dad were very kind. However, clearly this place was not what it was supposed to be. I kindly asked the host to come talk to me about my issues and in came two “grown” adults that were very confrontational. Neither of them apologized about the inconvenience or were even shocked when I mentioned my concerns. Instead they responded with “what do you want us to do? Give you a hug?” I’ve never in my life been so upset or met such rude people. I don’t know what to do about housing now. I was excited to be paying $1800 for rent so I could pocket more money this contract but now I quickly moved out and am headed to a hotel. My first shift starts Monday. All I wanna do is cry and go back home. This also isn’t my first contract or first bad experience with housing so please save the rude messages about how this comes with being a travel nurse.
submitted by MissxDiagnosis to TravelNursing [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 05:30 PunkrockPopeye Beat Em'!

Beat Em'!
"Beat Em'!"
Sometime among the events of the very first Kinder Cosmic...
The director of the United States Space Force marches back and forth before a gathered group of several hardened space marines all standing at attention within a large training room as he addresses the group with a general Patton like speech.
USSF Director: Ladies and gentlemen...We are at the precipice of the dawn of a new age!
*The group murmurs amongst one another curiously.
USSF Director: Time and time again threats from opposing galaxies, dimensions, and outer worlds; some beyond the very realm of human comprehension have descended upon our little blue marble suspended in space and threatened our quality of life, our society, our safety, our sovereignty and our very existence!
*Several members of the group shudder and gasp as the director continues his sermon.
USSF Director: If the citizens of this United States, no...The very world itself are to maintain our status qu-
*The group diverts their attention behind the director towards the sound of a loud, laborious sigh.
*The director shoots a disapproving glare at the alien grey known as Alpha as he continues to speak.
USSF Director: As of late, the only force standing between the citizens of this planet and total annihilation has been...
The lady astronaut and appointed liaison to the greys; one Luna Valentina gently pushes the little grey alien known as Jorg towards the middle of the room as she whispers in his earholes.
Luna: ...Go ahead, Jorg!
*Dressed in a bright red silk dress and miniskirt with a purple bandanna tied tightly around the crown of his head; Jorg stares at the hem of his dress with either side clasped tightly within his hands as he swings his hips from side to side and hums happily as the dress flutters back and forth.
The USSF Director sighs apathetically as he continues to speak, pointing at the little grey now standing beside him.
USSF Director: W-What...
*The Director shields his mouth and whispers to Alpha and Luna as Jorg continues swaying unmoved and unbothered.
USSF Director: What th-....What is this?
*Luna laughs and smiles as she replies patiently.
Luna: The only way I could get him to cooperate is if I let him wear his dress!
*The Director stares at Jorg still humming and fluttering from side to side and then Alpha confusedly.
Alpha: He thinks it makes him stronger...
*Luna giggles as she follows Alpha’s words.
Luna: He...he doesn't understand how feminism works!
*The Director stares at the flamboyant grey and then Alpha once more.
*Alpha throws his hands up as he replies.
Alpha: Who the hell am I to tell him otherwise? As far as I know it probably does!
*The USSF Director sighs frustratedly as he quips.
USSF Director: Jesus fucking Christ...Can he fight wearing it?
*Alpha smirks mischievously as he speaks.
Alpha: ...Jorg? Jorg can fight in anything, anywhere, at anytime!
USSF Director: Fine...Well I guess we'll conti-
*Suddenly the Director is interrupted by a massive, muscled and imposing Sergeant who addresses the group obnoxiously.
Sergeant: Why is that little alien wearing a fuckin' miniskirt!?
Luna snaps defensively.
Luna: HE'S IN TOUCH WITH HIS FEMININE SIDE!
*A private nearby mutters knowingly.
Private: Well, I heard that lil' shit is completely unhinged!
*The group of hardened space marines murmur amongst one another as Luna plants her hands on her hips and speaks once more.
Luna: NO HE ISN’T! HE SAVED YOUR IGNORANT ASSES!
*The Sergeant points at the preoccupied grey as he speaks once again.
Sergeant: That scrawny, 80 lbs, ugly ass little critter? Saved what? Ru Paul's drag race?
*The private glares at the Sergeant standing beside him confusedly as he continues to speak.
Private: Where the hell have you been man!? You didn't hear about what happened in Tulsa?
*The Sergeant cuts a sidelong glance at the private as he continues to speak.
Sargeant: Stationed abroad... No phones, or internet, or TV, or electricity, or running water...not even a fuckin working toilet! So no...I don't know "what happened in Tulsa".
Private: ...Oh. Well I HEARD he leveled half a city fighting some interstellar Lovecraftian planet killer...
USSF Director: OFFICIALLY THAT WAS A LEVEL 4 EARTHQUAKE!
Private: SURE BOSS! whatever y'all say, it's not like it hasn't been cycling all over Tiktok for months...
USSF Director: RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA! A DIVERSIONARY TACTIC TO UNDERMINE UNITED ST-
*Alpha sighs again loudly.
*As the group continues to bicker incessantly the USSF Commander from "Kinder Cosmic: Paradise Lost" strolls into the training room and smiles with a large grin as he leans against a supply depots consignment widow and addresses it's quartermaster casually.
Commander: Has it started yet!?
QuarterMaster: ....Has what started yet?
*The Commander grins mischievously as he continues to speak.
Commander: Say...Are you a bettin' man?
Quarter Master: On what exactly?
Commander: Costello over there of course!
*The Quarter Master stares at the grey still preoccupied with his pretty dress and then the Commander once again.
Quarter Master: That sick lookin, effeminate little space midget against ALL OF THEM!?
*The Commander smiles knowingly.
Commander: You bet your ass!
*The QuarterMaster doubles a glance back and forth between the grey and the Commander as he speaks.
QuarterMaster: How drunk are you?
Commander: VERY!
QuarterMaster: How much do you wanna put down on him?
*The Commander reaches into his pocket then slams several stacks of money upon the window's table as he speaks.
Commander: My ENTIRE goddamned pension!
*The Quarter Master stares at the little grey smiling as he swings in his pretty red dress and then the hardened military veterans and finally, the grinning Commander once more.
Quarter Master: You're on!
*The USSF Director silences the gathered, bickering and murmuring group as he interjects.
USSF Director: QUIET!
*The group of military commandos quickly stand at attention as the USSF Director commences pacing and continues his addressment once again while Luna smiles knowingly and Alpha shakes his head from side to side...also knowingly.
USSF Director: THE POINT IS! That we're facing a potential threat that is completely out of human understanding, the very laws of physics itself and our current martial capabilities!
*The USSF Director points at the greys; Alpha’s arms folded as he stands like a solemn statue and Jorg still hyperfocused as he busily plays with his red dress.
USSF Director: Although they ARE friendl-
*Alpha’s face sours distastefully as he hisses underbreath.
Alpha: Pshhh...
*The Director darts a sharp glare at Alpha who returns it with a twisted, smug expression and then at Luna who shrugs her shoulders casually.
USSF Director: ....Although they ARE NOT THE ENEMY we can not let the future of humanity...
*The Director stares at Jorg who is still absolutely lost within his own world as he continues to speak.
USSF Director: ...Rest upon the strapless shoulder blades of one four and a half foot; morally and mentally compromised little...whatever in the hell this thing is.
*The Director points towards Jorg as he flutters and sways repeatedly.
*Luna retorts defensively as Alpha comments sarcastically.
Luna: HEY!
Alpha: Well...I mean, he's right. Man's still kinda a misguided idiot but when he's right he's right!
*The Director glares at Alpha once more as his subordinates murmur and contemplate his directive aloud amongst one another.
Private: We are so, so, so completely and utterly screwed...
*The Sergeant standing besides the private shrugs apathetically as he speaks.
Sergeant: I don't see what the big deal is...
*The director marches to and fro once again as he continues to speak.
USSF Director: That being said! The ONLY WAY to adjust our combat to this new enemy is simulated combat WITH THE ENEMY!
Private: I'M NOT FIGHTING THOSE THINGS!
*Alpha smiles slyly and quips sarcastically as The Director retorts with a commanding tone.
Alpha: ....Sissy!
USSF Director: Oh yes you will private! Unless of course you want... AN EXTRA WORK DETAIL!
Private: GOD-DAMNIT!
*The Director grins as he continues to speak.
USSF Director: Besides! You'll only be facing a single extraterrestrial opponent today, Alpha has adamantly refused to participate in this exercise...
*Alpha retorts sharply.
Alpha: I said, "You can go fuck yourself", that's what I said.
*Luna erupts with a riotous laughter as the USSF Director glares at Alpha in return.
*The Sergeant points towards Jorg still playing with his fluttering dress.
Sergeant: And lil' Miss Doubtfire over here? HE'S supposed to be our opponent!?
*Luna beams with pride as she retorts.
Luna: I wouldn't underestimate Jorg! He's wildly talented!
Sergeant: At what!? Martha Stewart style homesteading?
*The group snickers as Luna giggles and returns a mischievous grin and then quips once more.
Luna: THAT TOO!
*Alpha clarifies casually as the group murmurs and looks on at the little grey still lost amongst the surrounding atmosphere.
Alpha: Consent for Jorg is kind of a non-issue, he's barely aware of where he is half the time. When goaded he does have a certain instinctive enthusiasm for martial combat under the right conditions. I don't even know where he learned it, he just came back one day and knew it innately. Like a telekinetic amalgamation of something between Ong-Bak and Jet Li...
*The Private stares at the little grey in suspended disbelief.
Private: Under...what conditions?
*Alpha grins knowingly; as he responds.
Alpha: Basically...You've got to manage to piss him off.
Private: "Piss him off?"
*The Sergeant cracks his knuckles as he smiles belligerently.
Sergeant: Well this should be easy!
*Alpha shrugs unknowingly.
Alpha: Maybe...Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't! To evoke this reaction from Jorg or to "Piss him off"; it is like this ingrained psychological trigger. It isn't so much guided as a form of premeditated anger as a kind of pro-active defense mechanism. He's not even really fully aware when he does it. I think it may be a kind of "Fight or Flight" reaction he just does. Except Jorg...well...Jorg pretty much always chooses to fight.
*The privates eyes widen curiously as he stares the little grey up and down before him.
Private: Is he...is he dangerous!?
*The USSF Commander laughs heartily as he slams his hand upon the provisional warehouse window and retorts excitedly.
USSF Commander: YOU CAN BET YOUR ASS HE IS!
*The QuarterMaster glares at the USSF Commander as he chimes in.
QuarterMaster: I wanna replace my bet!
*The USSF Commander replies snarkily.
USSF Commander: TOO LATE ASSHOLE!
*Alpha, Luna, The Director and the group of soldiers all divert their attention towards the Commander and QuarterMaster until Alpha continues speaking.
Alpha: Jorg!? Dangerous? I mean...IF YOU DESERVE IT then I dunno...
*Alpha shrugs apathetically.
Alpha: ...Maybe? I really doubt he'd actively kill anyone though.
*The private throws his hands into the air and addresses Alpha frustratedly as the group murmurs amongst themselves once more.
Private: THE FUCK YOU MEAN "MAYBE" AND YOU "DOUBT HE'LL KILL ANYONE"!?
*Alpha shrugs once more...
Alpha: It's Jorg...Jorg is Jorg! You'll see...
*The private stares at the two greys one after another then retorts underbreath as he turns to walk away.
Private: I'm so not fuckin doing this...
USSF Director: MORE WORK DETAIL!
Private: GODDAMNIT!
Sergeant: Well I think they're full of shit...
Private: THEY TORE APART AN ENTIRE MILITARY BASE "JUST BECAUSE".
Sergeant: Of Non-combatant "week-long warriors" I bet! Might as well be a buncha national guardsmen...I mean...JUST LOOK AT HIM!
*The Sergeant points towards Jorg still swaying giddily.
Sergeant: ...There's no way in hell that little queer fella could take a seasoned soldier!
*Luna retorts defensively.
Luna: JORG ISN’T GAY! HE'S JUST SENSITIVE AND HE'S VERY SPECIAL!
*Luna cuts her gaze towards Alpha seeking confirmation.
Luna: He isn't...is he?
*Alpha shrugs unknowingly and apathetically as the group murmurs amongst themselves once more.
*The Private suddenly turns then approaches a series of lockers and containment bins stowing riot gear, defensive equipment and padded suits much like one that would be used to disarm a bomb or train a K-9 attack dog as nearly all of his peers follow suit...
Private: I'm not fucking with this lil dude without my PPE!
*The Sergeant snorts obnoxiously in response as he watches.
Sergeant: I don't need that crap...Besides, it's hard to move or fight with all that bullshit on! Whatchu gonna do? Bumper car bang him to death with it?
*The Private shrugs undisturbed.
Private: ....Whatever!
The crowd gathers all around the little grey warily; some armed with things like MMA gloves, hand-wraps, Batons and extended martial defense metallic rods as they all approach the grey from all angles.
Suspicious and cautious at exactly what the little grey might do and exactly how he might respond.
That is all but one, the boisterous military Sergeant who readies himself and then throws the very first strike at the seemingly defenseless and unsuspecting Jorg.
Without ever even lifting his eyes from the hem of his dress, in a matter of moments warping the surrounding spectators very perception of time; Jorg shifts his head slightly towards the left as the Sergeant's fist narrowly misses the grey by a hair's length.
*The USSF Commander slams his hand upon the provisional warehouses window once more as he retorts giddily.
USSF Commander: HAH!
What happens next can best be described through the conveyance of a matter of collective very short-lived and somewhat difficulty perceived moments.
The next soldier and the next and the next and the next; all of them simultaneously rush towards the little grey slinging their fists and their weapons towards the inattentive and unbothered little grey.
Jorg bobs, weaves, and feints his big grey bandanna wrapped head not unlike a hyperactive, super-powered Muhammad Ali; as fist and all flies from every perceivable angle, not ever touching him...not even once, his attention still diverted towards his fluttering dress all the while.
Another military combatant rushes forewords and thrusts a kick towards the grey; to which he spins out of reach with seamless grace as yet another kick comes flying from it's opposing direction to which the grey quickly ducks then loops his body around from underneath...still playing with the hem of his pretty red dress still humming to himself gleefully as Luna erupts with laughter.
Sergeant: What...what the hell IS THIS!?
Luna: I TOLD YOU!
Private: He....He never even LOOKED at us...NOT ONCE!
*The Director stares at Luna and Alpha then questions them curiously.
USSF Director: Why isn't he defending himself?
Alpha: ...Probably because Jorg doesn't see any of you as a threat.
*The boisterous military Sergeant walks towards Jorg then plants a single finger upon his forehead then slowly pushes him backwards; to which Jorg sways back then forwards then rests in the exact same position of which he'd originally been.
Sergeant: What do you mean he doesn't see us as a threat?
*Alpha responds casually.
Alpha: I mean exactly what I said! Jorg only reacts when driven towards it from an outside stimulus; when he himself, someone he cares about, or perhaps even others are under certain conditions of diress such as a threat or pressure or the friction of oncoming conflict. It is very difficult to tell exactly when this trigger will set off from an outside perspective but FOR JORG these lines are ingrained within his very being. It's like a reflex, he doesn't even have to think about it.
Private: How is it he can move so quickly like that? I could barely even see him doing it!
Alpha: Part of it is because Jorg instinctively compounds his telekinesis with Kinetic energy. The other is because he's clairvoyant, prophetic even. This doesn't just apply to the precepts of time or it's passage through the universe itself but also to an outside stimulus. But just like almost all things concerning Jorg; he isn't fully aware of what he's doing and what he does it its all interdependent on outside stimulus and outside perception and interpretation. In short, Jorg is like a living mirror in everything he does and reasons for doing them. A reflection of one's self whether they even realize it or not. He could punch through a two inch steel wall or bulletproof plate glass window faster than you could blink if he wanted to...
*Alpha shrugs casually.
Alpha: ...Only problem is it takes alot for Jorg to actively feel inclined to do so. Well...sometimes. All that being said apparently he sees absolutely none of you as an inclination for him to act...and so...he doesn't. He doesn't see any of you as a threat!
*The Sergeant fumes angrily and frustratedly as he stares at the preoccupied little alien frustratedly and then speaks angrily.
Sergeant: WHADDYA MEAN "HE DOESN'T SEE ME AS A THREAT"!? I'M A GODDAMNED NAVY SEAL! I DID TWO TOURS IN AZKABAN!
*Alpha replies to the Sergeant flatly and unflinching.
Alpha: Exactly what I just said...Your limited human capabilities and physicality to Jorg is a non-issue. You're not big enough, strong enough, forceful enough or physically capable through your own recognizance of being a perceivable threat to him.
*The Sergeant stands from the opposing side of the playful grey in the little red dress then angrily unbuttons and unholsters his service weapon as he holds it in both hands, pointed towards the ground.
*The USSF Commander laughs a riotous laugh as he spectates from the warehouse window some distance away then pounds the desk upon it once more as he goads the Sergeant playfully.
USSF Commander: YOU GET EM HOSS!
*The Commander quickly turns towards it's QuarterMaster then whispers as he winks towards his glare.
USSF Commander: ....Fucking idjit!
*Luna’s eyes widen with worry as she begins to speak.
Luna: I WOULDN'T DO TH-
*Alpha calmly places a gentle hand upon Luna’s shoulder as he knowingly interjects solemnly yet very mischievously.
Alpha: Nah....Let em'.
The Sergeant steadies his firearm upon the grey methodically as all of his compatriots watch onwards nervously.
And what happens next, again...Can best be explained by a breakdown of a series of events that through our perception of time unfolded within a matter of moments.
...But to Jorg himself? Well, that's another matter entirely.
Just like one perceptive light switch suddenly being flicked on from deep, deep, deep within Jorg’s psyche. The little grey suddenly raises his head; his black, saucer shaped eyes widened with a perfectly aligned subconscious awareness. One of them twitching erratically above a maddened grin as above and all throughout this training room; the loud deafening roar of electric guitar reverberates one ear-splitting and most deafening melody.
Loudly cutting through the awkward silence not unlike a high-powered circular saw this melody is that of the song "Beat It" the cover of an infamous Michael Jackson tune preformed by the band "Fall Out Boy".
https://youtu.be/Qt54wA7Z2LY
And as this guitar melody drones and roars throughout the intercom and sirens of the facility all around; As Alpha smirks smugly and Luna laughs...and then gasps. What follows suit could be quite accurately articulated as a series of movements so perceivably fast, powerful, and deadly accurate that one could quite convincingly say that Jorg DID move faster than a human could blink.
He quickly utilizes his telekinetic energy with one hand to jerk the firearm out from within the Sergeant's grasp not unlike a vaulted football ripped from between a running back's fingers. And as this pistol flies and spins towards Jorg he launches himself into the air, quickly preforming a spinning back kick that smacks against the gun sending it ricocheting and flipping once more until it hurtles directly dead center of the Sergeant's face sending him spiraling and sprawled out upon the ground nearby while the gun itself deflects, is thrown against a nearby wall and then misfires.
Space Marine: SHIT...MY LEG!
And as the lyrics of the song echo and vibrates all throughout this training room, quaking its walls and cushioned floormats with every progressing spoken word; the frightened private quickly turns to sprint in the other direction, absolutely ANY direction away from Jorg.
But little did he know; it was far, far, far too late...
Jorg harnesses his telekinetic energy to rip the man's legs out from beneath him, as he does Jorg quickly sprints forward, leaps into the air again like a telekinetic grasshopper then dead drops his knee into the private's back.
As Jorg "ground and pounds" the back of the privates combat protective headgear repeatedly in rapid succession; not unlike quick repeating Wing-Chun punches into the back of the man's head, striking and bouncing his forehead off of the training floor's cushioned material all to the rhythm of this melody. The surrounding marines look around at one another, murmuring in a stunned confusion as the private cries for help.
Private: G-G-GET I-
*WHACK! *BANG! *POW! *WHOMP! *THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!
Private: GET IT OFFA ME!
*The USSF Director points at the private then addresses the fearful combatants sternly.
USSF Director: ...WELL!? HELP HIM!
*One of the remaining combatants turns to kick Jorg off of the private when the grey quickly stops then pivots as if in anticipation of said strike; catches the man's ankle then smiles with a malevolent grin before twisting it with a loud *CRACK!
*Luna squints her eyes closed and winces painfully as Alpha grins a grin very much reflective of Jorg’s and they both comment.
Luna: Oooooooh!
Alpha: Fuck em'...
Elsewhere at the provisional warehouse window the USSF Commander slams his hand down upon the table once more as he also comments; smiling at the QuarterMaster with a shit eating grin all the while.
USSF Commander: That looked like it HURT LIKE HELL! GET EM' HOSS!
*The QuarterMaster also comments, sneering distastefully.
QuarterMaster: I fuckin' hate you...
Elsewhere amongst the whirlwind of rapid, successful strikes and all to a melody; Jorg now stands his miniskirt fluttering in training room's AC cooled air along with the motion of his movements with the Marine's now broken ankle held between the palms of his hands; the man still wailing with pain.
In an amount of time accumulating to less than the passage of a few seconds; the grey spins and leg sweeps the other man's remaining limb, tossing him upwards into the air before kicking him in the abdomen with a telekinetically reinforced strike that sends the man hurtling into and bouncing off of the nearest wall.
As another approaching soldier moves in to strike Jorg the grey quickly hops a foot into the air once more; then quickly plants a deflective side kick in rapid, fluid succession into the center of the man's chest which sends him staggering back just a few paces.
*The soldier hardens himself as he pounds his chest then closes in on Jorg once more.
Space Marine: IS THAT ALL YOU GOT!?
And as this melody continues to pound with a thunderous roar all throughout the training room; Jorg smiles a sadistic smile.
While the man races forwards to preform a takedown upon the little grey, Jorg quickly and acrobatically dips his head and upper abdomen towards the ground. With a certain level of martial flexibility mirroring that of a Shaolin Monk the grey lifts the pad of his foot from behind towards where his head originally was, arching it upwards and from behind his backside with his torso now angled downwards, he then slams the bottom of his foot into the Marine's forehead; stunning him instantaneously.
Jorg quickly rights his equilibrium and with a fluid, unceasing movement uses that very same leg to plant a telekinetically charged front kick into the man's sternum; sending him flying backwards and crashing into yet another padded wall.
Space Marine: YOU CRAZY LITTLE SHIT!
A remaining marine shouts at Jorg and then races towards him from a flanked position sending his own angled "axe kick" towards the grey's abdomen.
And as this melody pounds and reverberates the ether all around from every perceivable direction; without so much as a moments hesitation, forethought, or consideration Jorg side steps then archs his own leg around the own man's "Axe Kick" locking it into place.
*The Marine's eyes meet the grey's; whose deep, darkened saucer shaped eyes are deadlocked onto his own. Shining with a glossy, detached madness as the grey's smile widens. And with their legs locked in place, Jorg intentionally restricts the man's movement; the Marine's remaining free leg trembles as he utters words of fear and astonishment.
Space Marine: Oh....SHI-
*Before the man can even get the words out the grey hops into the air with his remaining leg with the other still locked in place, then uses his free leg to dropkick the soldier dead center of his chest with another telekinetically reinforced strike before quickly releasing his leglock to send the man vaulting into another padded wall not unlike a human bullet.
And as this resounding melody finally tolls onwards towards it's completion; the little grey still stands in the middle of this training room. In the exact spot in which he'd originally began; surrounded by moaning, bloody, blackened and bruised human cadavers.
Who at this point are each and all very, very much alive; though perhaps their pride...not so much.
*Luna shakes her head from side to side as the USSF Director speaks.
USSF Director: Well...we're never doing that again!
*Alpha stares at the director and smiles with an air of apathy.
Alpha: I could have told you but you'd never have listened...
*The private spits a mouthful of blood onto the ground as he slowly gathers his strength to try to lift himself from it, next to the still unconscious Sergeant lying face down on the floormat beside him.
Private: We are so...so...so fucked.
*At the provisional warehouse window the QuarterMaster counts out the last of his debt and then slams it upon the table towards the USSF Commander's outstretched smile now grinning from ear to ear.
USSF Commander: It was nice doin' business with you!
QuarterMaster: Shut the hell up...
submitted by PunkrockPopeye to funny [link] [comments]

2023.06.04 03:54 PotatoForSale Probably the biggest Costco steal of my life (and a short story included!). Happy smoking!

Probably the biggest Costco steal of my life (and a short story included!). Happy smoking!
Walked into my local Costco two days ago with the intent to purchase a Masterbuilt Gravity Series 900 Charcoal Grill. The store had only a single boxed product left in inventory, but due to an ongoing move and limited space in my car I figured I'd come back the following day to make my purchase. After all, it's nearly closing time and there's no way someone would beat me to the purchase in the time it takes me to return. Right? Oh, right..
So I return to Costco early in the morning the next day only to find that the price has dropped! $150! Such luck, or so I thought! Except.. I quickly came to realize that there's just one little problem..
Yup.. The last boxed product was sold. At this point I'm utterly defeated and fully prepared to go home with my head hung down in shame.
However, the story doesn't end there. Astute Costco shoppers have probably already realized the reason for the discounted price. It is in fact the floor model itself which is being sold as is!
For the unaware - the Grillmaster Gravity line products are much beloved by the grilling community at large. The primary complaint people leverage against it is that it's a bit, uh, of a headache to assemble - and that's putting it nicely.
Yet here I am. Standing in front a fully- constructed, ready to get smokin' Grillmaster of my dreams.
But a second problem soon arises. How in the lord's name am I ever going to fit this fatty boi into the back of my Civic? Am I truly insane enough to throw it into the hatchback and hope for the best?
You damn well know I am.
At this point I have become completely blinded by my excitement and refused to acknowledge reality. And let me tell you. This was, truly, one of the worst ideas I've ever had.
It's just not going fit. Trust me, I tried every way conceivable. It's just not going to fit, and no amount of effort will change that fact.
What I wasn't expecting was the help of a stranger. Let's call him Tim, because that was the name he shared with me.
Tim is an angel. An angel with a heavy duty pick-up truck.
Tim goes out of his way to swing on by, make mention of how much he saw me struggling (accurate assessment, Tim), and offered to deliver the product to my new place free of charge.
Tim (or was it Tom? Honestly, it could be either), you went out of your way to assist a stranger in need and refused to be compensated despite my insistence.
I hope you know that your needless generosity is the reason I'm about to snack on some slow-smoked St. Louis Style Ribs tonights.
It's because of you, Tim.
Or Tom.
Again, either or.
Anyways, this meal is dedicated in your presumed name - whichever one it may be.
A Costco memory that will last a lifetime.
submitted by PotatoForSale to Costco [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 21:46 Good-Measurement8884 St Louis

Does anybody know what hotel visiting teams stay at when playing in St. Louis? Particularly the Yankees
submitted by Good-Measurement8884 to ballparks [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 21:40 Ryudoku [H]Humble and Fanatical leftovers (Civ VI,Fallout 76, Overcooked! 2) [W]Star Renegades, Godstrike, Bug Fables ,Disc Room and Others

Rep

WANT:

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling (Priority)
Star Renegades (Priority)
Death's Door (Priority)
Disc Room (Priority)
Godstrike (Priority)Beneath OresaTainted Grail: Conquest
Epic Battle Fantasy 5
Kingdom Rush Games
- Kingdom Rush Origins
- Legends of Kingdom RushThe Ascent
The Last CampfireFae Tactics
Batora Lost Haven
Flynn Son of Crimson
Gotham Knights
XCOM Enemy Uknown Complete Pack
Loop Hero
One Piece Pirate Warriors 3
Shantae: Risky's Revenge - Director's Cut
MO:Astray
Maybe some others , will check your lists if you have
​

Games that I can give:

Humble
Mar 2023
Biomutant
Jurassic World Evolution 2
Hero's Hour
Rogue Lords (Might Keep)
Demon Turf
Golden Light
Feb 2023
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Enchanced Edition
Fallout 76 + Fallout 1
Shady Part of Me
Fobia - St. Dinfna Hotel
Five Dates
Jan 2023
Tribes of Midgard
Encased: a Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG
Olliolli World - Rad Edition
Grow: Song of the Evertree
Conan Chop Chop
Hokko Life
The Serpent Rogue
Nov 2022
Hell Let Loose
Shadow Tactics : Aiko's Choice
Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
Jul 2022
DEEP ROCK GALACTIC (Might Keep)
Necromunda : Hired Gun
Legion TD2
Lawn Mowing Simulator
Yes Your Grace
Trudograd
CAPCOM SUMMER 2022 BUNDLE
Street Fighter V
Strider
Bionic Commando
Apr 2022
Destroy All Humans!
Killsquad
Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos
Suzerain
Chicken Police
Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker
Feb 2022
Per Aspera
Just Die Already
Before We Leave
Paradise Lost
Calico
**Dec 2021 (11 choices)*\*
Mordhau
Endzone - a World Apart
Beyond the Wire
Partisans 1941
Lacuna - A Sci-Fi Adventure
8 Doors
Greak: Memories of Azur
Fling to the Finish
Tohu
Voidigo
Nov 2021 (9Choices)
Due Process
House Flipper
Wingspan
BPM: Bullets per Minute
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
Juno: New Origins
Timelie
Wrath: Aeon of Ruin
Mbius Front 83'
Oct 2021 (8 choices)
Amnesia: Rebirth
John Wick Hex
112 Operator
Guts and Glory
Garage: Bad Trip
Tools Up
Hiveswap Friendsim
Syberia 3
Aug 2021 (9 choices)
Last Oasis
Superliminal
We need to go Deeper
Out of Space
Carto
As far as the eye
Cepheus Protocol
Drake Hollow
Encodya
Jul 2021 (12 choices)
Yakuza 3 Remastered
The Surge 2
DIRT 5
All of the other games I haven't claimed this bundle
Jun 2021 (9 choices)
Sid Meier's Civilization VI PLatinum Edition
Secret Neighbor
Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse
Worms Rumble+ Legends Pack Dlc
Milky Way Prince - The Vampire Star
Desolate
Paw Paw Paw
Effie
Disjunction (GOG)
May 2021 (10 choices)
Hellpoints
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3
Levelhead
Fury Unleashed
Morkredd
Relicta
Retimed
Family Man
Vane
Mar 2021 (8 choices)
Control Standard Edition
Elex
WWE 2K BATTLEGROUNDS
Peaky Blinders:Mastermind
Cyber hook
Pesterquest
Wildfire (Might Keep)
Boreal Blade
Feb 2021 (7 choices)
ENDLESS SPACE® 2 - DIGITAL DELUXE EDITION
The Wild Eight
Train Station Renovation
Valfaris
Werewolf: The Apocalypse Heart of the Forest
Lovecraft's Untold Stories
Iris and the Giant
Dec 2020 (10 choices)
Overcooked! 2 (Only the main game, I have claimed the Dlcs)
The Beast Inside
Shining Resonance Refrain (Might Keep)
Zwei: The Arges Adventure (Might Keep)
Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection (Might Keep)
The Haunted Island, A Frog Detective Game
Frog Detective 2: The Case of The Invisible Wizard
Still There
Struggling
Path of Giants
Jul 2020 (6 choices)
Age of Wonders: Planetfall Deluxe Edition
Railway Empire
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
Beat Hazard 2
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive
Verlet Swing
Basingstoke
HUMBLE NEW COUCH CLASSICS BUNDLE
Lethal League Blaze (Might Keep)
Ultimate Chicken Horse
HUMBLE BANDAI NAMCO BUNDLE 4
Tales of Berseria
GET EVEN
HUMBLE QUEBEC INDIES BUNDLE
Leap of Fate
Toto Temple Deluxe
HUMBLE SWEET FARM FALL BUNDLE
Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
Coffee Talk
CHUCHEL Cherry Edition
ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove
HUMBLE LET'S FIGHT BUNDLE
Stick Fight: The Game
Divekick
Nidhogg
Overgrowth
Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing
Fanatical
Dungeons 3
The Walking Dead: The Final Season
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition
Duke Nukem Forever: Hail to the Icons Parody Pack
Duke Nukem Forever: The Doctor Who Cloned Me
Expeditions: Viking
Pathologic Classic HD
Shelter 2
submitted by Ryudoku to indiegameswap [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 19:46 Kjc2022 Trail recommendations for 3 day/2 night

Looking for trail recommendations for a 3 day/2 night backpacking trip. Looking for something with amazing views, preferably a couple at good places to stop to camp for the 2 overnights. Also want something that has good water sources for along the way.
Location: Colorado, North New Mexico, South Wyoming -From the St Louis, so hoping for something within 20 hours
Skill level: Moderate
Duration: 3 days/2 nights
Type: preferably Loop or Point to Point where I can call a ride to get back to my car
Length: 20-30 miles. Would like to keep ~5-10 miles per day (getting older and more interested in the views and experience, than putting miles in)
Wildlife: preferably an area that doesn't have much bear activity
The above are preferences, so I would still be interested in trails that don't perfectly match the above. Any recommendations would be appreciated!
submitted by Kjc2022 to backpacking [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 18:17 throwawaymcat12 Sanity check for final school list? High stats, good ECs, maybe some red flags

Hey everyone! Posting this WAMC from a throwaway just because it has more personal details. I had done a WAMC on SDN and here before, but the school list seemed really top heavy, and also there are apparently people out there with 10-30 publications 💀. Hoping to just get some final feedback before I submit.
GPA: cGPA: 3.82 and sGPA: 3.74, B.S. in Biochemistry, minor in chemistry
MCAT: 521
Demographics: URM white hispanic (so marking white and mexican), bisexual.
Illinois residency, ties to Ohio and Michigan
School type: T40 private, primarily paid for with merit scholarships, grants, and work during school
Clinical (all volunteer): 200 hrs EMT emergency response (over 2 years), 700 hrs with a free clinic working primarily with AA and hispanic populations (over 2 years), doing patient assessments and vitals
Research: Roughly 1,000 hrs at 2 labs (400 hrs at first, 600 at second) with 2 first-author presentations at local school conferences from the 2nd lab
Shadowing: 32 hrs shadowing an anesthesiologist, 32 hrs primary care physician
Non-clinical volunteering (most impactful):
I have to double check because it's my part-time gap year work, but it's probably over 2,000 hours at this point over 3 years and my gap year. All my hours have been as a volunteer and now as a director for a 100-person social justice and government policy non-profit. As a volunteer, I largely worked with hispanic and AA students by going into local schools and helping host sessions to discuss issues affecting local students and their communities (food deserts, lack of internet access, LGBTQ issues, etc), as well as leading laptop and internet hotspot distribution programs that gave students hundreds of devices.
As I worked up in leadership, I got more involved in the policy side of things. I've been the director of our national townhall series, which are events hosted with national political leaders. I coordinated and ran the events for townhalls with all the candidates for Cleveland's mayoral election (including incumbent mayor), the candidates for Congresswoman for our national congressional district, and our state's Secretary of State. All these events primarily focused on lack of internet access in our city and have had around 5,000 attendees in total. I also later helped to manage the school program mentioned in the first paragraph, which has worked with over 6,000 students across 40 different schools in the area.
Finally, I helped get legislation passed at the state level, entailing over $200 million in internet broadband funding from the Federal Government for our state. This entailed writing up a policy white paper, going to the state capital to talk to the State congress, discussing the issues and details with the bill's sponsor, and working with another policy research non-profit. This ultimately created the BroadbandOhio program, which I've been working with for the last year on additional legislation for Ohio. I've also been involved with our grant process and have applied for and managed about $200,000 in grant funding.
Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc):
Biology TA for 2 years, resident assistant and senior resident assistant for 3 years, emergency dispatcher for one year, and led a large campus board for 3 years.
This board involved me leading and overseeing about 13 student organizations and 1,000 students, working directly with administration on student issues related to media. I also wrote up a report and created a new student center through the conversion of an old building; got about $300,000 in funding from administration for it and the board itself had about $500,000 in annual budget that I managed directly. Board was advised by an associate dean that I'm close with. I also have some minor leadership in comparison to the campus board and non-profit work.
Relevant honors or awards:
Won two national awards, about $15,000 in scholarships, several campus awards, and featured on the news for the non-profit; won a campus award and a $1,000 prize for leading the student center project. Some other minor stuff like Dean's list and around $10,000 for research funding over 2 summers from 2 separate grants.
Anything else not listed you think might be important:
Letter writers will be the biology professor I took a class with and later TA'd for; nutrition professor I took several classes and a graduate research seminar with; physics professor I had for a small class and who liked my non-profit work; founder and former CEO of the non-profit I'm on the board for; and dean for the student board.
Issues:
Got 2 Cs in Calc 2 and Ochem 1 freshman year and a withdrawal from an economics class during sophomore year (got a concussion and just general difficulties with adapting to college). However, I've had a near 4.0 since then, with As in Ochem 2, 4 physics courses, and 2 upper division calculus courses. Finally, my school offers a committee letter but, because of a change I had to make in my application, it'll be delayed until SeptembeOctober because my school normally submits them in August. Because of that, I've decided to go with individual letters, which I know is a negative and a knock against me, but I'd rather have the guarantee of submitting early with my own letters. I also will not have a PI letter of recommendation and research will not be one of my MMEs (the student board, non-profit, and free clinic will be)
I primarily want to target T20 ish schools (maybe want to do a competitive specialty) in the Midwest/Northeast in urban areas (I do bike and transportation advocacy as a hobby, so they're very important to me) and apply to around 20-30 schools, hopefully with merit money.
Preliminary list:
Northwestern
UChicago
Rush
UIC
Loyola
Washington University in St. Louis
University of Iowa
University of Michigan
Ohio State
University of Cincinnati
Mayo (MN)
Vanderbilt
Duke
Emory
University of Pittsburgh
University of Rochester
Albert Einstein
Columbia
Mt. Sinai
Cornell
Georgetown
Yale
Harvard
UCLA
UCSF
Case Western
Maybe: NYU, Stanford, Penn, JHU, Jefferson, Boston, George Washington, Brown
submitted by throwawaymcat12 to premed [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 17:39 HouseRaptorRiv Any local places make ginger fried rice?

I love just about anything with ginger in it. I had ginger fried rice at a Thai restaurant near St. Louis and it immediately became my fav rice dish. I’ve searched menus of local restaurants here but I haven’t found a restaurant that makes it. Has anyone seen it on a menu around here?
submitted by HouseRaptorRiv to HuntsvilleAlabama [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 17:32 HeadOfSpectre The Soldier

"Think of this as a chance at revenge," Sweeney said.
​
Revenge.
​
What a moronically quaint idea.
​
This jumped up little shit had come into my home, interrupted my retirement and here he was talking to me about revenge, as if he knew the first thing about what I’d seen, what I’d been through, why I’d quit.
​
Looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t understand. I knew he couldn’t.
​
I've been hunting vampires for most of my life. I've killed more of them than I can count. But Clementine Di Cesare was no ordinary vampire. Hell, none of the Di Cesares were ordinary vampires, but even among them Clementine was… unique. She was the one all the others quietly feared. The one who was even spoken of with reverence by the Di Cesares masters, those twin Immortals who could not be killed by any weapon of this world. Seeking revenge against her was like seeking revenge against death itself.
​
“Revenge?” I repeated, with a dismissive scoff.
“You’re really going to tell me that after what she put you through, you don’t want revenge?” Sweeney asked.
“If you knew what she did to me, you’d know why I don’t want revenge,” I replied.
“Really? Sorry Franklin, but I don’t buy that. Look, I get it if you’re reluctant to jump back into the fight. I do. You of all people know just how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are. Especially ‘La Morte’.”
​
I looked over at him as he said that name. It rolled off his tongue so irreverently. To him, it was just a name. An alias assigned to some vampire he’s only heard of stories. He didn’t utter it with the respect it deserved, and I almost couldn’t be bothered to correct him. Any words spent on this small minded glory hound were probably wasted.
​
“Yes, I do know.”
“Which is why I need you,” Sweeney said. He almost sounded as if he were pleading with me. “Think of this as an opportunity to set things right… to put that vampire bitch in the ground where she belongs, and save God only knows how many lives in the process!”
I sighed.
He just didn’t get it.
​
“Mark my words, Mr. Sweeney, if you chase after Clementine Di Cesare, you’ll end far more lives than you save. She didn’t get a name like ‘La Morte’ for nothing. She earned it. Purchased it with the blood of the tens of thousands she’s sent screaming into the maw of Hell. She is not something you chase, Sweeney.”
“She’s a vampire,” Sweeney said dismissively. “She’s another enemy to destroy.”
“That’s what George Bundy said,” I replied. “Then not too long after, he died.”
“I’m not George Bundy,” Sweeney said.
“No. You sure as hell ain’t,” I agreed, before looking the kid in the eye.
​
He thought he was an up and comer, climbing the ranks of the Brethren. He probably thought of himself as some sort of badass vampire hunter too, when in reality he could never have so much as dreamed of holding a candle to the likes of Bundy… or hell, any of the men who’d died in Brazil.
“You should watch your tone with me,” Sweeney warned.
“Or you’ll do what?” I asked, “You ain’t going to frighten me with vague threats, boy. I’ve walked through Hell, trying to kill the Devil. What have you done?”
​
Sweeney bit his lip but didn’t respond.
“There’s nothing you can say or do that will intimidate me,” I said, before lighting myself a cigarette. I stared at the road outside of my porch, old memories flooding back to me before looking over at Sweeney again. He sat in his chair beside me like a sulky child. This was the man who wanted to destroy the Di Cesare family? Pathetic.
​
“Exactly how much do you know about the Brazil Job?” I asked.
“I know it was a failure. Clementine Di Cesare killed most of the men the Brethren sent out… all except for you. You were the only one good enough to beat her.”
“Good enough…” I repeated with a huff, “Hardly… whatever picture you’ve got in your head of some glorified battle, throw it away. Trust me, the Brazil Job was anything but glorious. It was a two hour long trek through Hell. And I didn’t beat Di Cesare at the end of it. I survived her. They’re two different things entirely.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Sweeney said.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I sighed and took another drag on my cigarette.
​
This kid wasn’t going to leave until I made him understand… so I told him my story. I told him everything even though I knew he’d learn nothing from it.
​
***
​
I’d joined up with the Brethren Knights of St. Fontaine back in the 1980s to hunt monsters. Back then, it seemed like the best use of my skills. I’d done my tours with the army, but even after I got out, I was still looking for an enemy to fight. So naturally, once I found out that vampires were real, I set my sights on them. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time.
​
The Brethren Knights fancied themselves the descendants of the Knights Templar, and they insisted that their God given mission was to protect mankind from the things that lurked in the shadows. I didn’t really have much love for God at the time, but if the Bretheren were the ones fighting the monsters, then I was happy to tolerate the Jesus freaks in their ranks.
​
It was 1988 when we first heard whispers of the Imperium. A supposed cabal of vampires, trying to get them organized. At the time, it’d seemed too crazy to be true. Vampires generally went their own way, in my experience. At most, they might have a partner but other than they they didn’t really socialize with their own kind. But supposedly someone out there had the big fucking balls to keep them in line, and whoever they were, they scared the shit out of the Brethren.
​
They’d started targeting high profile vampires, trying to find someone who was involved in this ‘Imperium’, hoping that maybe they might get someone to talk. And it wasn’t long until they found someone who did.
​
From my understanding, the vampire they captured didn’t seem to know much about who was actually running the show. But they knew who their second in command was… and that was when I first head about the Di Cesare family.
​
The name was familiar to some of the higher ups in the Brethren, and I’d heard some stories. Not sure which were true, but the long and short of it was that the Di Cesare’s and the Brethren shared a bloody history, and didn’t particularly like each other too much.
​
George Bundy explained it to me like this at one point: ‘The Di Cesare’s are an old family. Most of them used to be witches, up until their Matriarch turned them into vampires. Now they’re a whole new kind of nasty. Far as I know, the only time anyone’s actually managed to kill one was about 200 years ago. Anyone who’s tried since has ended up dead, so most folks don’t even bother anymore.’
​
I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising they’d be involved in the Imperium, but the mere mention of their name ruffled some feathers higher up on the chain of command, and eventually they put out a kill order on them. Most of the Di Cesare’s were generally pretty hard to track down, but the top brass had a pretty good line on their matriarch, Bianca Di Cesare. Supposedly, she’d been spotted near the family’s private estate in Brazil and rumor had it that most of her daughters were there too.
​
Normally, the brass wouldn’t have sanctioned any kind of attack on them. The Di Cesare’s were already considered off limits, and attacking them at their private estate was considered damn near impossible. The estate was located in a small mining town outside of Manaus called Refugio de Julia, or just Julia for short. The town was fairly remote, being only accessible from a few backroads and most folks tended to avoid it, claiming they’d had various strange encounters in the area. Their accounts described unsettling pale figures with dark hair and large green eyes working in the mines, although some of the more disturbing stories we heard involved sightings of other creatures in the jungle surrounding the town. Massive spiders with humanoid faces, tending rotting corpses filled with stinging bees, giant howling beasts who tore through the forest, hunting prey, and beautiful women who would appear in the nearby towns, betwitching men into coming away with them only to reveal themselves as monsters who fed on the blood of their victims. Some had even claimed the Di Cesares themselves were such beasts… although those claims weren’t taken quite as seriously.
​
A skeptic might say the stories that surrounded Julia seemed like little more than just local superstition… but the Brethren had been dealing with the supernatural for long enough to recognize when something was probably real, and when it was probably fake and they knew damn well that most of the stories about Julia were probably true. None of them had ever dared set foot in Julia to find out for sure, since doing so would probably be suicide, but the theory was that the Di Cesares had created Julia as something of a refuge for other creatures. Other vampires, werewolves, arachne, karah and all sorts of other hellspawn. They offered them a home and safety in exchange for their labor in the mines. Hell, the name of the town more or less spelled it out.
​
Refugio de Julia
​
Julia’s Haven.
​
Julia had been the name of the only member of the Di Cesare family that the Brethren had ever killed, so I guess it was only fitting they named the town after her.
​
I honestly think using other creatures like them as a workforce was a bit inspired… since it made Julia damn near impenetrable. Reaching their estate at the far side of the town would have been impossible without being noticed by every creature of hell living in that town, and odds are they’d tear anyone apart long before they even reached the gates of the Di Cesare estate. And if one had the bright idea to approach the estate from another angle, they’d be trudging through miles and miles of rainforest to do so, only end up face to face with a massive stone wall that kept the rainforest out.
​
In effect - the Di Cesare estate was a fortress. Getting in would be no easy feat, to say nothing of confronting the vampires within. But with the fear of the Imperium gnawing at the back of their minds, the Brethren had finally set their minds to trying.
​
George Bundy had been the one in charge of planning the operation out.
​
I’d known Bundy before I’d joined up with the Brethren. Hell, Bundy was the whole reason I’d joined the Brethren. He’d been my CO a number of years back, and he’d earned his reputation as a hardass just about ten or twenty times over. Bundy was a gruff looking man with a bushy moustache and intense eyes. During the years I knew him, I don’t believe I ever once saw him so much as crack a smile. He only ever seemed to speak when he felt there was something he needed to say. Otherwise, he was usually dead silent.
​
He was somewhere in his late fifties back in 88. By all rights, he ought to have retired years ago. But he refused.
“I’m a soldier,” He said, when I asked him about it once. “That’s all I am. I don’t know what else to be.”
​
Bundy’s initial plan had been to hit the Di Cesare estate from the air. Come in fast and loud with a couple of helicopters and see how those vampires stood up to some good old American flak. The idea got shot down pretty quickly, so to speak. Apperantly, most if not all of the Di Cesares had cursed their own bodies, causing whatever wound one inflicted on them to appear on whoever it was who had wounded them. Going in guns blazing would have ended in a bloodbath… and not for them. There were also some concerns about drawing attention from Julia. With no conclusive data on just what they had living in that town, there was no guarantee we’d be safe in the air. A few eyewitnesses had described seeing giant nests in some of the trees in the jungle, supposedly consistent with the nests made by harpies.
​
Flying in guns blazing was out. So Bundy went back to the drawing board and what he came back with… well, it was ballsy, but it almost seemed like it just might work. During his reconnisance of the Di Cesare’s estate, he’d noticed a large but shallow tributary flowing into the amazon river that led right through the Di Cesare’s estate. Along the tributary was an abandoned water mill, that connected to the Di Cesare estate.
​
He’d suggested using the water mill to gain entry to the grounds, and from there, move on the Di Cesare’s. That plan had been approved, and Bundy had been allowed to handpick his team for the operation. He’d chosen fifteen men, all of them ex military, most of them having served under him before.
​
He’d told us we would be dividing into three teams of five men each. We would leave Manaus by boat, and land at three different areas near the tributary before making our way to the mill on foot, where we would regroup, before moving on the Di Cesares. The reason for the division was to ensure that if any of our teams ran into trouble upon making ground, the entire operation wouldn’t be compromised.
​
Team 1, led by Bundy himself would depart first and land to the west of the tributary. Team 2, led by a man named Ferdinand Hernandez would make land about fifteen minutes later near the mouth of the tributary and Team 3, to be led by me would land fifteen minutes later to the east.
​
On the day of the operation, I sat in my boat, watching as the other two left. It was twilight when we set out, and I remember that as my team and I carried out our final checks on our equipment, the only thing I felt was a familiar anticipation.
​
I’d hesitate to call it fear. Fear is what came later. Anticipation is the better word. I knew we could be walking into a tough situation… but I trusted Bundy. I trusted he’d run a smooth op. God knew, he’d done it a thousand times before.
​
The team assigned to me wasn’t anything particularly special. They were competent enough, but none of them would’ve been my first choices. Jack McMullen, for instance, who was about the same age as I was at the time. We’d both served under Bundy before, although while I respected Bundy, Jack was wholly devoted to him. I swear, if the man had told him to stuff a live grenade up his ass, Jack would’ve done it without a moments hesitation. I dunno if Jack simply saw him as the father he’d never had or what, but he damn near worshipped Bundy.
​
I can’t quite say the same for the other guys we had with us, though. One of them, some greenhorn by the name of Pearce Wilson struck me as an airheaded pretty boy who’d never actually had his boots on the ground before, while the other one, Scott Barber had left a bad taste in my mouth last time we’d worked together. Barber was capable… but he was violent. This was a kid with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, and it looked a hell of a lot like that Confederate flag patch he wore on his jacket. He wanted an excuse to shoot something, and I don’t think he cared what. Under most circumstances I’m not sure I would’ve fully trusted him with a gun.
​
The last one though, Joseph Feng… him I trusted. Feng was the one I knew the least about, and he didn’t seem much for conversation. But he handled himself competently enough and seemed to know when to sit down and shut up.
​
When Team 2’s boat was far enough away, we got the radio signal to follow. Barber was the one steering the boat, so I gave him the order to cast off and we ventured out into the twilight, unaware of just what was waiting for us out there.
​
***
​
We landed in our designated area fifteen minutes after Team 2 confirmed they’d touched down at theirs. Our landing was fairly uneventful. Feng, Barber, and I secured the boat before we radio’d Bundy to let him know we were in position. After that, it was just a matter of making it to the tributary.
​
As we ventured into the jungle, the world around us was quiet. There was wind, the whisper of the river behind us, and the sounds of animals. But little else. The river fell away behind us as we moved in single file toward the tributary, maintaining radio silence as we did.
​
It was about a half hour before we heard the gunshot.
​
Just one, echoing through the twilight. But it was enough to give us pause.
​
“The fuck was that?” I heard Barber ask. Immediately, the kid was on high alert, with his gun raised as if he were expecting every monster in Julia to come charging at us from all angles.
I just listened, waiting to hear if there was anything else. I half expected my radio to come to life, but it didn’t.
“Team 1, status?” I asked.
The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.
​
I tried it again, but still with no success. The radio was working, that much I was sure of. Something had to be blocking the signal.
“What’s going on?” Feng asked.
“Dunno,” I replied. “Comms are down.”
“Down?” Wilson asked, “So we’re flying blind out here, then?”
“More or less,” I replied.
“What do we do? Do we go back… if the comms are down…”
“Just because something’s jamming our signal doesn’t mean we’re made,” I said. “Relax. We keep moving for now. You keep your eyes wide open, and your head on a swivel. We’ll make it to the tributary and see if we can’t meet up with the other teams.”
I could tell Wilson wasn’t a fan of my answer, but I didn’t much care. We had a job to do, and I aimed to do it.
​
I pressed on without a further word and the others followed. Up ahead, I could hear the sound of running water and picked up the pace. I figured the tributary had to be close… and I was right.
​
I emerged from the brush into the stream, only to pause when I saw what was waiting for us in the water.
​
In the dying sunlight, it was impossible to mistake the bodies sprawled out on the rocks as anything else… and all I needed to do was look at their uniforms to know they were our people.
“Jesus…” I heard Wilson say under his breath. He froze up, lingering by the bank as I cautiously approached one of the bodies.
​
It belonged to a somewhat heavyset man with a thin mustache who I recognized as Hernandez. His eyes were still open, although lifeless and staring in different directions, and there was a clean hole in his forehead where a bullet had ended his life. The gunshot we’d heard earlier had likely been the sound of his death.
​
Looking at the bodies around him, I knew they had to be the rest of Team 2… although it was a little harder pinning down their cause of death. Some sort of bladed weapon, perhaps, judging by the state of them. I realized the odds were that they walked into some sort of ambush.
“What about Bundy and Team 1?” Jack asked, “Any sign of them?”
“No,” I said. “These bodies are all from Team 2… Bundy could still be ahead of us.”
“Then we need to keep going!”
​
Jack turned, heading up the stream and Barber was right behind him. Feng paused for a moment, thinking this over before following. Only Wilson remained.
“How do we know we’re not walking into a trap?” He asked.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” I said before moving to follow the others.
“With all due respect, Sarge… that doesn’t sound like the best course of action!” Wilson argued, finally following me. “It sounds just like a good way to get killed!”
“Yeah?” I asked, “I’m gonna tell you an ugly truth, kid. That’s the job. Make your peace with it, and it’ll go a lot easier.”
​
Wilson didn’t like that answer either and trailed off behind me, watching as I continued upstream. For a moment, I half expected him to go back to the boat… but no. I dunno if he found his balls or just didn’t want to get left behind, but he started to follow us again.
​
I kept trying to raise Team 1 on the radio while we walked, although I still had no luck. The light above us slowly faded into darkness as we trudged through the water in silence, guns sitting comfortably in our hands and mosquitos biting at our necks.
​
It wasn’t until we lost Feng that I heard anybody so much as make a sound, and when we lost Feng… it happened almost instantaneously. One minute, he was at the head of the group, walking just ahead of Jack and I. The next, he was gone, only barely having the time to let out a scream as he fell into the river ahead of us.
​
The rest of us paused. Jack seemed to freeze and I pushed past him, calling out for Feng as I did. As punishment for my compassion, I almost went down after him. I only barely stopped myself from stepping on the slippery rocks that had helped send him to his demise.
​
I could see Feng’s body in the water, and I could see the blood pouring out of him. He twitched a few times, but I knew he was dead. The sharpened wooden spikes jutting out of him confirmed as much.
“What the hell…” Jack said under his breath, staring at Feng’s corpse in disbelief. “That’s a fucking spike trap!”
​
Yeah.
​
It was indeed a fucking spike trap.
​
I could see other spikes jutting out of the water ahead of us, just past a small dam of rocks that were just slippery enough to make it difficult to stop yourself from falling. Some of those spikes had other bodies on them… likely members of Team 1. I only counted two, although that still didn’t exactly bode well.
​
“They put a fucking spike trap in the goddamn stream…” Jack said, “Who the hell does that?”
“Somebody who’s expecting us to use the stream,” I replied.
“So they know we’re coming?” Barber asked.
“Clearly…” I replied. “And they’ve got a good idea on what our route is too.”
​
“Yeah, no shit!” Barber snapped. “Christ… let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s probably more fucking traps upstream!”
“Bundy’s orders were clear!” Jack argued.
“Bundy’s probably dead by now!” Barber replied, before looking at me. “Sarge, come on. You have to know this is suicide!”
“Suicide was part of the job description, was it not?” I asked.
“The job is to kill those fucking vampires, not to die in the goddamn process! We need to get out of the stream and into the woods!”
​
“Judging by the fate Team 2 met, I’m not sure the forest is someplace we want to be right now,” I replied.
“Excuse me?” Barber asked, “What the hell are you talking about, Sarge?”
“Five men dead, but only one gunshot. How did the rest die?”
​
Barber didn’t seem to be able to answer that.
“By now… yes. It’s clear we’ve walked into a trap. And yes, I understand that it makes sense to try and leave that trap… but I don’t know if we’ll be safer in the jungle. Something jumped Team 2. Cut them apart, and then shot Hernandez as a warning. They didn’t have to shoot him. They did it so we’d hear.”
“Your point being?” Barber asked.
“I don’t think this is just a trap, Barber. It’s a game. Stop playing, and you might just end up like our friends downstream.”
“A game?” Wilson asked, “Sarge, you can’t be serious!”
​
“From where I’m standing, we have a better chance of surviving in the stream,” I said. “Look, we’re at least halfway to the rendezvous point, and there have to be at least two members of Team 1 left. The safest thing to do right now is to follow them.”
“You’re off your fucking rocker, Sarge,” Barber spat, locking his eyes with mine. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to try and fight me. But no. He was wise enough to stand down.
“If you wanna get yourself killed, go right the fuck ahead. Just leave me out of it! Wilson, come on,” Barber said before trudging over to the edge of the stream. Wilson didn’t even hesitate, just looking back at Jack and I quietly before he disappeared into the forest with Barber.
​
“You’re not gonna stop them?” Jack asked.
“No,” I replied. “God willing, there’s a chance that pigheaded asshole is right… dunno how much of a chance, but a chance.”
“Then how come we’re not following him?” Jack asked.
“There’s also a chance he’s wrong.”
I turned, before making my way around the spike trap.
“Keep a slower pace,” I said. “Watch for traps.”
​
Jack hesitated for a moment, but he followed me without any further questions and we walked in silence for a little longer.
​
We heard nothing from the trees. Nothing that told us about the fate of Barber and Wilson. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.
​
In fact, I don’t think we heard a thing until about a half hour later, when we heard the explosion.
​
It came out of almost nowhere, but ahead of us I could see a flash of light and hear the screams of men. On instinct, I found myself picking up the pace and could hear Jack behind me. In the low light, I saw a shape float past me in the stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was a severed human arm.
​
In the water ahead of us, I could see a figure clinging to one of the rocks and trying to pick himself up. I recognized him as George Bundy.
​
Jack was at his side almost immediately, trying to help the old man to his feet.
“Sir! Are you alright?”
Bundy just wheezed, before his legs gave out from under him. I helped Jack drag him to the shore so he could sit and rest for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking back at the stream.
“Grenade trap… I think…” Bundy panted, “Fucking tripwire… Popkov tripped it, I think…”
​
Popkov… odds are he was one of the two mangled corpses lying in the river a few feet away from us. It seemed they’d taken the brunt of the explosion, although Bundy still had some shrapnel in his arm that Jack was tending to.
“Christ… whole fucking ops gone to shit…” Bundy spat. “Team 2 got taken out just about as soon as they landed. Someone killed them and dumped them in the goddamn river. Lost half my boys to the fucking spike trap and half to this…”
​
He looked up at us, before spitting onto the ground.
“Guess you two haven’t done much better.”
“Hard to say,” I replied. “Two of ours took off into the woods, trying to avoid the traps.”
“Then they’re dead,” Bundy replied. “I’ve seen her watching us… always just up ahead, always from a distance… she’s seeing how far we’ll go. How much we’ll take…”
“She?” I asked.
“La Morte. Should’ve figured she’d be the one to greet us.”
“La Morte?” I asked.
​
“It’s Italian. Supposedly, she earned that name around the time the Di Cesares fled Venice. It’s funny, the Brethren like to act like the Di Cesares leaving Venice was some big victory of theirs, since before they did, they finally killed one of them… hard to call it a victory though, considering how many corpses they made before they fled. And most of them came from La Morte…”
Bundy winced in pain as Jack bandaged his arm before he continued talking.
​
“See… when the Di Cesare’s left Venice, one of them stayed behind. Clementine, the Scorpio sister. Guess she was unwilling to leave the fight unfinished… and according to the stories, the death toll she personally amassed in the years after the Di Cesare’s left Venice make the bodies they claimed during the Venetian Massacre a hundred and fifty years prior look like a pittance. The Brethren still occupying the city started to call her La Morte. Death. Cuz wherever she went, death followed in her wake… and it seems we’ve walked right into her open arms, haven’t we, boys?”
​
“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
“She’s a Di Cesare… and the shit we’ve seen out here… I don’t see any other Di Cesare setting those traps. It’s her. I’m sure of it. She’s watching us. Seeing how far we’ll go. Seeing if we’ll turn tail…”
“Should we?” Jack asked, and Bundy finally seemed to acknowledge him.
“Excuse me?” He asked.
“Should we? Look, sir… I’d follow you into the mouth of Hell, but right now, we’re down from fifteen men to three. Can’t say I’m optimistic about our chances right now. If this woman is half as bad as you’re saying she is, maybe it’s time we took a step back!”
​
Jack looked at me, hoping I might back him up, but I remained silent.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bundy asked.
“What I’m hearing here, is that as of right now, the vampire out there could kill us at any time. She hasn’t. Far as I’m concerned, that’s mercy. Maybe we should be taking it while it’s offered.”
Bundy stared at him, before chuckling. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh.
​
“Just walk away, then?” He asked.
“Walk away, and come back better prepared!” Jack corrected.
“Walk away,” Bundy said again. “We walk away now, and there won’t be a chance to come back better prepared. We get one shot at this. One. Failure is not an option. We go in there and we kill them or we die. End of discussion.”
“And how exactly are we even supposed to kill them?” Jack asked, “That curse they have… bullets aren’t gonna do shit, sir!”
“Yours won’t, mine will…”
Bundy pulled his pistol from his holster. I noticed some sort of pattern crudely engraved on it.
​
“I’ve been doing some research… studied the curse they put on themselves… and I think I’ve found a way to break it. Not sure if it’ll work yet… but we get one chance to test it.”
Jack stared at the gun, then back at Bundy.
“Sir… do you hear yourself?” He asked quietly, “You can’t be serious… right now, even with that gun we don’t stand a chance in he-”
​
The gunshot echoed through the forest and made me jump. Jack’s voice died in his throat as he hit the ground.
​
Bundy stared at him for a moment, before huffing and holstering his pistol again. He draped his coat over his shoulders, before looking over at me.
“No room for failure, Frank,” He said calmly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared down at Jack’s body, my mouth hanging open slightly. When I looked back at Bundy, he was already back in the stream.
​
There was a tense silence between Bundy and I as I followed him along the final stretch of the tributary. He trudged on ahead, covered in sweat and straining with every step, but I could sense the quiet determination he had to see this through. Looking at him, you could’ve told me that George Bundy could wipe out the Di Cesare’s all by himself and I would have believed it in a second.
​
The night around us was full of sound, and each one drew my attention. I watched the forest, expecting to see some sign of La Morte watching us. But I saw nothing, except for what she wanted me to see.
“Mill’s just up ahead,” I heard Bundy say as we pressed on, although I noticed his steps faltering as he seemed to notice something in the trees above us. I stopped behind him, looking up before seeing what he saw, and when I saw it I felt my stomach turn.
​
I’d seen death before.
But what Di Cesare had left out for us… that was something else.
Pearce Wilson and Scott Barber weren’t dead.
But if they could have spoke, I’ve got no doubt they would have begged us to kill them. Wilsons pretty face was covered in blood and his pouty lips were parted as more trickled out of him. His curly blond hair was matted and I could see crimson there. Tree branches portruded from his ribs, while the loops of his entrails dangled out of his opened stomach. And Barber was in just about the same state, only he seemed to at least have the ability to turn his head to look at us.
​
I think he might have tried to speak, but the only sound he seemed to be able to make was a pained whimper.
“Jesus Christ…” I said softly.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Bundy replied. He took one last look at the two dying men hanging from the trees, before moving on.
“We should put them out of their misery, sir,” I said.
​
Bundy paused, before looking back at me.
“Don’t waste the ammo, Frank,” He replied. “They’re already dead.”
“Not yet they’re not!”
“Give them time. They chose to go into the woods. They can live with the consequences… for however long that lasts.”
​
With that, he left them. If I were a more compassionate man, I would have put them out of their misery. But no. Bundy moved on and so did I.
​
He approached the water mill, before examining it. It was an old building, made of stone that had long since been overgrown by moss, and sat right on the wall that separated the Di Cesares estate from the amazon. It hardly looked secure, even if the only entrance hadn’t just been an old wooden door secured with a padlock, finding a way in wouldn’t have been difficult. And it didn’t take much for Bundy to break through that door. All he needed was a couple of well placed kicks and it swung right open.
​
Drawing his gun, Bundy strode inside and I followed him.
“The Di Cesare’s will be in the main house,” He said. “We should find a way in through the back, try and catch them off guard. Main target should be the matriarch, Bianca. Her we should prioritize keeping alive… the rest are expendable.”
​
“Much as you are, I’m sure.” A voice called from deeper in the mill, and both Bundy and I froze.
I noticed movement on the floor above us, and through the shadows, I saw a tall woman watching us. She was dressed all in black, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the intense eyes of a soldier.
​
This had to be Clementine Di Cesare.
​
Bundy aimed his pistol at her, although she only barely seemed to notice.
“Only two of you left… I’m not sure the odds are in your favor,” The woman said. Her voice was low, calm and quiet.
“Only one way to find out,” Bundy growled.
“And only one way to walk out of this place alive,” Di Cesare countered. “You can put the gun down, turn and walk away. I won’t stop you. There’s no shame in living.”
​
“All the bodies you’ve left in your wake… that’s rich,” Bundy said.
“I don’t relish what I’ve done. I simply don’t know how to do anything else,” She replied. “Think about this, Bundy. Over my lifetime, there have been countless thousands who have come to kill me. All of them are dead, but I am not. Even if you could kill me… you could not kill my sisters. Not all of them. Not before they came for you.”
“Just you, would be enough…” Bundy said, before pulling the trigger.
​
I knew he’d hit her. I knew the bullet pierced her shoulder. But that woman… she didn’t even flinch. She simply dove out of the way before he could shoot again, taking cover and avoiding his next shot.
“Frank, upstairs!” Bundy snapped, “Flush her out!”
I went, trudging up the old wooden steps with my rifle drawn. Only to see Di Cesare vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground floor as soon as I made it up there.
​
Bundy shot at her again, only to miss for a second time. I saw Di Cesare’s arm move, and heard him cry out in pain. In the low light, I could see a dagger protruding from his shoulder. He stumbled back a step, leaving himself open for only a split second.
​
That second was all it took for Di Cesare to raise her own gun and fire just one shot.
​
George Bundy hit the ground without so much as a final scream. There was just a simple hole in his skull where she had shot him.
​
I felt my heart start to race faster. My eyes settled on Bundy’s gun, and I ran for the railing, vaulting it and dropping to the ground below with a thud. Di Cesare shot at me, and I felt the bullet tear through my leg. I reached out for the fallen gun and grabbed it before turning it on Di Cesare, only to find myself staring down the barrel of her own pistol. My finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it.
​
"Kill me, and you will not see the sun tomorrow." She said, her voice still cold and calm.
“Killing you is part of the job…” I replied, but my finger still couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“And is it worth your life?” Di Cesare asked. “You fail your mission either way.”
“And die with some goddamn honor…”
“There’s no such thing as honor. There is alive and there is dead. Choose.”
​
I knew what I was supposed to choose.
​
But my hands were shaking, as I stared into the face of death. My finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
​
The gun collapsed to the floor and Di Cesare kicked it away from me, before huffing and lowering her gun.
“Do not return,” She said softly. “Or next time, I will unleash a hell upon you that will make you beg for simple traps.”
​
She picked Bundy’s gun up off the ground, and then she was gone. After I finally picked myself up off the ground, I was gone too.
​
As I walked back along the stream… I passed the corpses of the men we’d left behind. Barber and Wilson, Jack, Feng, Hernandez, and his team. The flies were already feasting on them. Animals had already torn at them. And as I looked down at their cold corpses, I knew I had made the right choice.
​
I filed my report with the Brethren. Told them that Di Cesare had wiped us out, and a few months later I quietly retired. I never looked back.
​
***
​
“You walked away from her?” Sweeney asked in disbelief, “You had her dead to rights and you walked away from her?”
“I chose to live,” I replied. “Can’t say I regret the decision either. Because of the choice I made, I met my wife and had my kids. I’ve lived the life I had because I chose not to throw it away on some vampire.”
​
Sweeney just shook his head.
“You could have gotten the first confirmed kill on a Di Cesare in two centuries, and you threw it away you fucking coward! I could execute you for that!” I noticed his hand hovering over the gun on his hip.
“You could.” I replied, before quietly unholstering the pistol I kept at my side. I aimed it at Sweeney’s head.
​
He stared at me like a slack jawed idiot.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
“W-what…?”
“Would you like to give it a try, Mr. Sweeney? Or would you like to see the sun tomorrow?”
He stared down the barrel of my gun, and I already knew what his choice would be.
​
Sweeney took a step back. I saw his hand move away from his holster, and I lowered the gun with a huff.
“Thought so,” I said.
Mr. Sweeney left me without another word.
I knew he would not return.
submitted by HeadOfSpectre to TheCrypticCompendium [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 17:26 HeadOfSpectre The Soldier

"Think of this as a chance at revenge," Sweeney said.
​
Revenge.
​
What a moronically quaint idea.
​
This jumped up little shit had come into my home, interrupted my retirement and here he was talking to me about revenge, as if he knew the first thing about what I’d seen, what I’d been through, why I’d quit.
​
Looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t understand. I knew he couldn’t.
​
I've been hunting vampires for most of my life. I've killed more of them than I can count. But Clementine Di Cesare was no ordinary vampire. Hell, none of the Di Cesares were ordinary vampires, but even among them Clementine was… unique. She was the one all the others quietly feared. The one who was even spoken of with reverence by the Di Cesares masters, those twin Immortals who could not be killed by any weapon of this world. Seeking revenge against her was like seeking revenge against death itself.
​
“Revenge?” I repeated, with a dismissive scoff.
“You’re really going to tell me that after what she put you through, you don’t want revenge?” Sweeney asked.
“If you knew what she did to me, you’d know why I don’t want revenge,” I replied.
“Really? Sorry Franklin, but I don’t buy that. Look, I get it if you’re reluctant to jump back into the fight. I do. You of all people know just how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are. Especially ‘La Morte’.”
​
I looked over at him as he said that name. It rolled off his tongue so irreverently. To him, it was just a name. An alias assigned to some vampire he’s only heard of stories. He didn’t utter it with the respect it deserved, and I almost couldn’t be bothered to correct him. Any words spent on this small minded glory hound were probably wasted.
​
“Yes, I do know.”
“Which is why I need you,” Sweeney said. He almost sounded as if he were pleading with me. “Think of this as an opportunity to set things right… to put that vampire bitch in the ground where she belongs, and save God only knows how many lives in the process!”
I sighed.
He just didn’t get it.
​
“Mark my words, Mr. Sweeney, if you chase after Clementine Di Cesare, you’ll end far more lives than you save. She didn’t get a name like ‘La Morte’ for nothing. She earned it. Purchased it with the blood of the tens of thousands she’s sent screaming into the maw of Hell. She is not something you chase, Sweeney.”
“She’s a vampire,” Sweeney said dismissively. “She’s another enemy to destroy.”
“That’s what George Bundy said,” I replied. “Then not too long after, he died.”
“I’m not George Bundy,” Sweeney said.
“No. You sure as hell ain’t,” I agreed, before looking the kid in the eye.
​
He thought he was an up and comer, climbing the ranks of the Brethren. He probably thought of himself as some sort of badass vampire hunter too, when in reality he could never have so much as dreamed of holding a candle to the likes of Bundy… or hell, any of the men who’d died in Brazil.
“You should watch your tone with me,” Sweeney warned.
“Or you’ll do what?” I asked, “You ain’t going to frighten me with vague threats, boy. I’ve walked through Hell, trying to kill the Devil. What have you done?”
​
Sweeney bit his lip but didn’t respond.
“There’s nothing you can say or do that will intimidate me,” I said, before lighting myself a cigarette. I stared at the road outside of my porch, old memories flooding back to me before looking over at Sweeney again. He sat in his chair beside me like a sulky child. This was the man who wanted to destroy the Di Cesare family? Pathetic.
​
“Exactly how much do you know about the Brazil Job?” I asked.
“I know it was a failure. Clementine Di Cesare killed most of the men the Brethren sent out… all except for you. You were the only one good enough to beat her.”
“Good enough…” I repeated with a huff, “Hardly… whatever picture you’ve got in your head of some glorified battle, throw it away. Trust me, the Brazil Job was anything but glorious. It was a two hour long trek through Hell. And I didn’t beat Di Cesare at the end of it. I survived her. They’re two different things entirely.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Sweeney said.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I sighed and took another drag on my cigarette.
​
This kid wasn’t going to leave until I made him understand… so I told him my story. I told him everything even though I knew he’d learn nothing from it.
​
***
​
I’d joined up with the Brethren Knights of St. Fontaine back in the 1980s to hunt monsters. Back then, it seemed like the best use of my skills. I’d done my tours with the army, but even after I got out, I was still looking for an enemy to fight. So naturally, once I found out that vampires were real, I set my sights on them. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time.
​
The Brethren Knights fancied themselves the descendants of the Knights Templar, and they insisted that their God given mission was to protect mankind from the things that lurked in the shadows. I didn’t really have much love for God at the time, but if the Bretheren were the ones fighting the monsters, then I was happy to tolerate the Jesus freaks in their ranks.
​
It was 1988 when we first heard whispers of the Imperium. A supposed cabal of vampires, trying to get them organized. At the time, it’d seemed too crazy to be true. Vampires generally went their own way, in my experience. At most, they might have a partner but other than they they didn’t really socialize with their own kind. But supposedly someone out there had the big fucking balls to keep them in line, and whoever they were, they scared the shit out of the Brethren.
​
They’d started targeting high profile vampires, trying to find someone who was involved in this ‘Imperium’, hoping that maybe they might get someone to talk. And it wasn’t long until they found someone who did.
​
From my understanding, the vampire they captured didn’t seem to know much about who was actually running the show. But they knew who their second in command was… and that was when I first head about the Di Cesare family.
​
The name was familiar to some of the higher ups in the Brethren, and I’d heard some stories. Not sure which were true, but the long and short of it was that the Di Cesare’s and the Brethren shared a bloody history, and didn’t particularly like each other too much.
​
George Bundy explained it to me like this at one point: ‘The Di Cesare’s are an old family. Most of them used to be witches, up until their Matriarch turned them into vampires. Now they’re a whole new kind of nasty. Far as I know, the only time anyone’s actually managed to kill one was about 200 years ago. Anyone who’s tried since has ended up dead, so most folks don’t even bother anymore.’
​
I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising they’d be involved in the Imperium, but the mere mention of their name ruffled some feathers higher up on the chain of command, and eventually they put out a kill order on them. Most of the Di Cesare’s were generally pretty hard to track down, but the top brass had a pretty good line on their matriarch, Bianca Di Cesare. Supposedly, she’d been spotted near the family’s private estate in Brazil and rumor had it that most of her daughters were there too.
​
Normally, the brass wouldn’t have sanctioned any kind of attack on them. The Di Cesare’s were already considered off limits, and attacking them at their private estate was considered damn near impossible. The estate was located in a small mining town outside of Manaus called Refugio de Julia, or just Julia for short. The town was fairly remote, being only accessible from a few backroads and most folks tended to avoid it, claiming they’d had various strange encounters in the area. Their accounts described unsettling pale figures with dark hair and large green eyes working in the mines, although some of the more disturbing stories we heard involved sightings of other creatures in the jungle surrounding the town. Massive spiders with humanoid faces, tending rotting corpses filled with stinging bees, giant howling beasts who tore through the forest, hunting prey, and beautiful women who would appear in the nearby towns, betwitching men into coming away with them only to reveal themselves as monsters who fed on the blood of their victims. Some had even claimed the Di Cesares themselves were such beasts… although those claims weren’t taken quite as seriously.
​
A skeptic might say the stories that surrounded Julia seemed like little more than just local superstition… but the Brethren had been dealing with the supernatural for long enough to recognize when something was probably real, and when it was probably fake and they knew damn well that most of the stories about Julia were probably true. None of them had ever dared set foot in Julia to find out for sure, since doing so would probably be suicide, but the theory was that the Di Cesares had created Julia as something of a refuge for other creatures. Other vampires, werewolves, arachne, karah and all sorts of other hellspawn. They offered them a home and safety in exchange for their labor in the mines. Hell, the name of the town more or less spelled it out.
​
Refugio de Julia
​
Julia’s Haven.
​
Julia had been the name of the only member of the Di Cesare family that the Brethren had ever killed, so I guess it was only fitting they named the town after her.
​
I honestly think using other creatures like them as a workforce was a bit inspired… since it made Julia damn near impenetrable. Reaching their estate at the far side of the town would have been impossible without being noticed by every creature of hell living in that town, and odds are they’d tear anyone apart long before they even reached the gates of the Di Cesare estate. And if one had the bright idea to approach the estate from another angle, they’d be trudging through miles and miles of rainforest to do so, only end up face to face with a massive stone wall that kept the rainforest out.
​
In effect - the Di Cesare estate was a fortress. Getting in would be no easy feat, to say nothing of confronting the vampires within. But with the fear of the Imperium gnawing at the back of their minds, the Brethren had finally set their minds to trying.
​
George Bundy had been the one in charge of planning the operation out.
​
I’d known Bundy before I’d joined up with the Brethren. Hell, Bundy was the whole reason I’d joined the Brethren. He’d been my CO a number of years back, and he’d earned his reputation as a hardass just about ten or twenty times over. Bundy was a gruff looking man with a bushy moustache and intense eyes. During the years I knew him, I don’t believe I ever once saw him so much as crack a smile. He only ever seemed to speak when he felt there was something he needed to say. Otherwise, he was usually dead silent.
​
He was somewhere in his late fifties back in 88. By all rights, he ought to have retired years ago. But he refused.
“I’m a soldier,” He said, when I asked him about it once. “That’s all I am. I don’t know what else to be.”
​
Bundy’s initial plan had been to hit the Di Cesare estate from the air. Come in fast and loud with a couple of helicopters and see how those vampires stood up to some good old American flak. The idea got shot down pretty quickly, so to speak. Apperantly, most if not all of the Di Cesares had cursed their own bodies, causing whatever wound one inflicted on them to appear on whoever it was who had wounded them. Going in guns blazing would have ended in a bloodbath… and not for them. There were also some concerns about drawing attention from Julia. With no conclusive data on just what they had living in that town, there was no guarantee we’d be safe in the air. A few eyewitnesses had described seeing giant nests in some of the trees in the jungle, supposedly consistent with the nests made by harpies.
​
Flying in guns blazing was out. So Bundy went back to the drawing board and what he came back with… well, it was ballsy, but it almost seemed like it just might work. During his reconnisance of the Di Cesare’s estate, he’d noticed a large but shallow tributary flowing into the amazon river that led right through the Di Cesare’s estate. Along the tributary was an abandoned water mill, that connected to the Di Cesare estate.
​
He’d suggested using the water mill to gain entry to the grounds, and from there, move on the Di Cesare’s. That plan had been approved, and Bundy had been allowed to handpick his team for the operation. He’d chosen fifteen men, all of them ex military, most of them having served under him before.
​
He’d told us we would be dividing into three teams of five men each. We would leave Manaus by boat, and land at three different areas near the tributary before making our way to the mill on foot, where we would regroup, before moving on the Di Cesares. The reason for the division was to ensure that if any of our teams ran into trouble upon making ground, the entire operation wouldn’t be compromised.
​
Team 1, led by Bundy himself would depart first and land to the west of the tributary. Team 2, led by a man named Ferdinand Hernandez would make land about fifteen minutes later near the mouth of the tributary and Team 3, to be led by me would land fifteen minutes later to the east.
​
On the day of the operation, I sat in my boat, watching as the other two left. It was twilight when we set out, and I remember that as my team and I carried out our final checks on our equipment, the only thing I felt was a familiar anticipation.
​
I’d hesitate to call it fear. Fear is what came later. Anticipation is the better word. I knew we could be walking into a tough situation… but I trusted Bundy. I trusted he’d run a smooth op. God knew, he’d done it a thousand times before.
​
The team assigned to me wasn’t anything particularly special. They were competent enough, but none of them would’ve been my first choices. Jack McMullen, for instance, who was about the same age as I was at the time. We’d both served under Bundy before, although while I respected Bundy, Jack was wholly devoted to him. I swear, if the man had told him to stuff a live grenade up his ass, Jack would’ve done it without a moments hesitation. I dunno if Jack simply saw him as the father he’d never had or what, but he damn near worshipped Bundy.
​
I can’t quite say the same for the other guys we had with us, though. One of them, some greenhorn by the name of Pearce Wilson struck me as an airheaded pretty boy who’d never actually had his boots on the ground before, while the other one, Scott Barber had left a bad taste in my mouth last time we’d worked together. Barber was capable… but he was violent. This was a kid with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, and it looked a hell of a lot like that Confederate flag patch he wore on his jacket. He wanted an excuse to shoot something, and I don’t think he cared what. Under most circumstances I’m not sure I would’ve fully trusted him with a gun.
​
The last one though, Joseph Feng… him I trusted. Feng was the one I knew the least about, and he didn’t seem much for conversation. But he handled himself competently enough and seemed to know when to sit down and shut up.
​
When Team 2’s boat was far enough away, we got the radio signal to follow. Barber was the one steering the boat, so I gave him the order to cast off and we ventured out into the twilight, unaware of just what was waiting for us out there.
​
***
​
We landed in our designated area fifteen minutes after Team 2 confirmed they’d touched down at theirs. Our landing was fairly uneventful. Feng, Barber, and I secured the boat before we radio’d Bundy to let him know we were in position. After that, it was just a matter of making it to the tributary.
​
As we ventured into the jungle, the world around us was quiet. There was wind, the whisper of the river behind us, and the sounds of animals. But little else. The river fell away behind us as we moved in single file toward the tributary, maintaining radio silence as we did.
​
It was about a half hour before we heard the gunshot.
​
Just one, echoing through the twilight. But it was enough to give us pause.
​
“The fuck was that?” I heard Barber ask. Immediately, the kid was on high alert, with his gun raised as if he were expecting every monster in Julia to come charging at us from all angles.
I just listened, waiting to hear if there was anything else. I half expected my radio to come to life, but it didn’t.
“Team 1, status?” I asked.
The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.
​
I tried it again, but still with no success. The radio was working, that much I was sure of. Something had to be blocking the signal.
“What’s going on?” Feng asked.
“Dunno,” I replied. “Comms are down.”
“Down?” Wilson asked, “So we’re flying blind out here, then?”
“More or less,” I replied.
“What do we do? Do we go back… if the comms are down…”
“Just because something’s jamming our signal doesn’t mean we’re made,” I said. “Relax. We keep moving for now. You keep your eyes wide open, and your head on a swivel. We’ll make it to the tributary and see if we can’t meet up with the other teams.”
I could tell Wilson wasn’t a fan of my answer, but I didn’t much care. We had a job to do, and I aimed to do it.
​
I pressed on without a further word and the others followed. Up ahead, I could hear the sound of running water and picked up the pace. I figured the tributary had to be close… and I was right.
​
I emerged from the brush into the stream, only to pause when I saw what was waiting for us in the water.
​
In the dying sunlight, it was impossible to mistake the bodies sprawled out on the rocks as anything else… and all I needed to do was look at their uniforms to know they were our people.
“Jesus…” I heard Wilson say under his breath. He froze up, lingering by the bank as I cautiously approached one of the bodies.
​
It belonged to a somewhat heavyset man with a thin mustache who I recognized as Hernandez. His eyes were still open, although lifeless and staring in different directions, and there was a clean hole in his forehead where a bullet had ended his life. The gunshot we’d heard earlier had likely been the sound of his death.
​
Looking at the bodies around him, I knew they had to be the rest of Team 2… although it was a little harder pinning down their cause of death. Some sort of bladed weapon, perhaps, judging by the state of them. I realized the odds were that they walked into some sort of ambush.
“What about Bundy and Team 1?” Jack asked, “Any sign of them?”
“No,” I said. “These bodies are all from Team 2… Bundy could still be ahead of us.”
“Then we need to keep going!”
​
Jack turned, heading up the stream and Barber was right behind him. Feng paused for a moment, thinking this over before following. Only Wilson remained.
“How do we know we’re not walking into a trap?” He asked.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” I said before moving to follow the others.
“With all due respect, Sarge… that doesn’t sound like the best course of action!” Wilson argued, finally following me. “It sounds just like a good way to get killed!”
“Yeah?” I asked, “I’m gonna tell you an ugly truth, kid. That’s the job. Make your peace with it, and it’ll go a lot easier.”
​
Wilson didn’t like that answer either and trailed off behind me, watching as I continued upstream. For a moment, I half expected him to go back to the boat… but no. I dunno if he found his balls or just didn’t want to get left behind, but he started to follow us again.
​
I kept trying to raise Team 1 on the radio while we walked, although I still had no luck. The light above us slowly faded into darkness as we trudged through the water in silence, guns sitting comfortably in our hands and mosquitos biting at our necks.
​
It wasn’t until we lost Feng that I heard anybody so much as make a sound, and when we lost Feng… it happened almost instantaneously. One minute, he was at the head of the group, walking just ahead of Jack and I. The next, he was gone, only barely having the time to let out a scream as he fell into the river ahead of us.
​
The rest of us paused. Jack seemed to freeze and I pushed past him, calling out for Feng as I did. As punishment for my compassion, I almost went down after him. I only barely stopped myself from stepping on the slippery rocks that had helped send him to his demise.
​
I could see Feng’s body in the water, and I could see the blood pouring out of him. He twitched a few times, but I knew he was dead. The sharpened wooden spikes jutting out of him confirmed as much.
“What the hell…” Jack said under his breath, staring at Feng’s corpse in disbelief. “That’s a fucking spike trap!”
​
Yeah.
​
It was indeed a fucking spike trap.
​
I could see other spikes jutting out of the water ahead of us, just past a small dam of rocks that were just slippery enough to make it difficult to stop yourself from falling. Some of those spikes had other bodies on them… likely members of Team 1. I only counted two, although that still didn’t exactly bode well.
​
“They put a fucking spike trap in the goddamn stream…” Jack said, “Who the hell does that?”
“Somebody who’s expecting us to use the stream,” I replied.
“So they know we’re coming?” Barber asked.
“Clearly…” I replied. “And they’ve got a good idea on what our route is too.”
​
“Yeah, no shit!” Barber snapped. “Christ… let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s probably more fucking traps upstream!”
“Bundy’s orders were clear!” Jack argued.
“Bundy’s probably dead by now!” Barber replied, before looking at me. “Sarge, come on. You have to know this is suicide!”
“Suicide was part of the job description, was it not?” I asked.
“The job is to kill those fucking vampires, not to die in the goddamn process! We need to get out of the stream and into the woods!”
​
“Judging by the fate Team 2 met, I’m not sure the forest is someplace we want to be right now,” I replied.
“Excuse me?” Barber asked, “What the hell are you talking about, Sarge?”
“Five men dead, but only one gunshot. How did the rest die?”
​
Barber didn’t seem to be able to answer that.
“By now… yes. It’s clear we’ve walked into a trap. And yes, I understand that it makes sense to try and leave that trap… but I don’t know if we’ll be safer in the jungle. Something jumped Team 2. Cut them apart, and then shot Hernandez as a warning. They didn’t have to shoot him. They did it so we’d hear.”
“Your point being?” Barber asked.
“I don’t think this is just a trap, Barber. It’s a game. Stop playing, and you might just end up like our friends downstream.”
“A game?” Wilson asked, “Sarge, you can’t be serious!”
​
“From where I’m standing, we have a better chance of surviving in the stream,” I said. “Look, we’re at least halfway to the rendezvous point, and there have to be at least two members of Team 1 left. The safest thing to do right now is to follow them.”
“You’re off your fucking rocker, Sarge,” Barber spat, locking his eyes with mine. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to try and fight me. But no. He was wise enough to stand down.
“If you wanna get yourself killed, go right the fuck ahead. Just leave me out of it! Wilson, come on,” Barber said before trudging over to the edge of the stream. Wilson didn’t even hesitate, just looking back at Jack and I quietly before he disappeared into the forest with Barber.
​
“You’re not gonna stop them?” Jack asked.
“No,” I replied. “God willing, there’s a chance that pigheaded asshole is right… dunno how much of a chance, but a chance.”
“Then how come we’re not following him?” Jack asked.
“There’s also a chance he’s wrong.”
I turned, before making my way around the spike trap.
“Keep a slower pace,” I said. “Watch for traps.”
​
Jack hesitated for a moment, but he followed me without any further questions and we walked in silence for a little longer.
​
We heard nothing from the trees. Nothing that told us about the fate of Barber and Wilson. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.
​
In fact, I don’t think we heard a thing until about a half hour later, when we heard the explosion.
​
It came out of almost nowhere, but ahead of us I could see a flash of light and hear the screams of men. On instinct, I found myself picking up the pace and could hear Jack behind me. In the low light, I saw a shape float past me in the stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was a severed human arm.
​
In the water ahead of us, I could see a figure clinging to one of the rocks and trying to pick himself up. I recognized him as George Bundy.
​
Jack was at his side almost immediately, trying to help the old man to his feet.
“Sir! Are you alright?”
Bundy just wheezed, before his legs gave out from under him. I helped Jack drag him to the shore so he could sit and rest for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking back at the stream.
“Grenade trap… I think…” Bundy panted, “Fucking tripwire… Popkov tripped it, I think…”
​
Popkov… odds are he was one of the two mangled corpses lying in the river a few feet away from us. It seemed they’d taken the brunt of the explosion, although Bundy still had some shrapnel in his arm that Jack was tending to.
“Christ… whole fucking ops gone to shit…” Bundy spat. “Team 2 got taken out just about as soon as they landed. Someone killed them and dumped them in the goddamn river. Lost half my boys to the fucking spike trap and half to this…”
​
He looked up at us, before spitting onto the ground.
“Guess you two haven’t done much better.”
“Hard to say,” I replied. “Two of ours took off into the woods, trying to avoid the traps.”
“Then they’re dead,” Bundy replied. “I’ve seen her watching us… always just up ahead, always from a distance… she’s seeing how far we’ll go. How much we’ll take…”
“She?” I asked.
“La Morte. Should’ve figured she’d be the one to greet us.”
“La Morte?” I asked.
​
“It’s Italian. Supposedly, she earned that name around the time the Di Cesares fled Venice. It’s funny, the Brethren like to act like the Di Cesares leaving Venice was some big victory of theirs, since before they did, they finally killed one of them… hard to call it a victory though, considering how many corpses they made before they fled. And most of them came from La Morte…”
Bundy winced in pain as Jack bandaged his arm before he continued talking.
​
“See… when the Di Cesare’s left Venice, one of them stayed behind. Clementine, the Scorpio sister. Guess she was unwilling to leave the fight unfinished… and according to the stories, the death toll she personally amassed in the years after the Di Cesare’s left Venice make the bodies they claimed during the Venetian Massacre a hundred and fifty years prior look like a pittance. The Brethren still occupying the city started to call her La Morte. Death. Cuz wherever she went, death followed in her wake… and it seems we’ve walked right into her open arms, haven’t we, boys?”
​
“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
“She’s a Di Cesare… and the shit we’ve seen out here… I don’t see any other Di Cesare setting those traps. It’s her. I’m sure of it. She’s watching us. Seeing how far we’ll go. Seeing if we’ll turn tail…”
“Should we?” Jack asked, and Bundy finally seemed to acknowledge him.
“Excuse me?” He asked.
“Should we? Look, sir… I’d follow you into the mouth of Hell, but right now, we’re down from fifteen men to three. Can’t say I’m optimistic about our chances right now. If this woman is half as bad as you’re saying she is, maybe it’s time we took a step back!”
​
Jack looked at me, hoping I might back him up, but I remained silent.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bundy asked.
“What I’m hearing here, is that as of right now, the vampire out there could kill us at any time. She hasn’t. Far as I’m concerned, that’s mercy. Maybe we should be taking it while it’s offered.”
Bundy stared at him, before chuckling. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh.
​
“Just walk away, then?” He asked.
“Walk away, and come back better prepared!” Jack corrected.
“Walk away,” Bundy said again. “We walk away now, and there won’t be a chance to come back better prepared. We get one shot at this. One. Failure is not an option. We go in there and we kill them or we die. End of discussion.”
“And how exactly are we even supposed to kill them?” Jack asked, “That curse they have… bullets aren’t gonna do shit, sir!”
“Yours won’t, mine will…”
Bundy pulled his pistol from his holster. I noticed some sort of pattern crudely engraved on it.
​
“I’ve been doing some research… studied the curse they put on themselves… and I think I’ve found a way to break it. Not sure if it’ll work yet… but we get one chance to test it.”
Jack stared at the gun, then back at Bundy.
“Sir… do you hear yourself?” He asked quietly, “You can’t be serious… right now, even with that gun we don’t stand a chance in he-”
​
The gunshot echoed through the forest and made me jump. Jack’s voice died in his throat as he hit the ground.
​
Bundy stared at him for a moment, before huffing and holstering his pistol again. He draped his coat over his shoulders, before looking over at me.
“No room for failure, Frank,” He said calmly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared down at Jack’s body, my mouth hanging open slightly. When I looked back at Bundy, he was already back in the stream.
​
There was a tense silence between Bundy and I as I followed him along the final stretch of the tributary. He trudged on ahead, covered in sweat and straining with every step, but I could sense the quiet determination he had to see this through. Looking at him, you could’ve told me that George Bundy could wipe out the Di Cesare’s all by himself and I would have believed it in a second.
​
The night around us was full of sound, and each one drew my attention. I watched the forest, expecting to see some sign of La Morte watching us. But I saw nothing, except for what she wanted me to see.
“Mill’s just up ahead,” I heard Bundy say as we pressed on, although I noticed his steps faltering as he seemed to notice something in the trees above us. I stopped behind him, looking up before seeing what he saw, and when I saw it I felt my stomach turn.
​
I’d seen death before.
But what Di Cesare had left out for us… that was something else.
Pearce Wilson and Scott Barber weren’t dead.
But if they could have spoke, I’ve got no doubt they would have begged us to kill them. Wilsons pretty face was covered in blood and his pouty lips were parted as more trickled out of him. His curly blond hair was matted and I could see crimson there. Tree branches portruded from his ribs, while the loops of his entrails dangled out of his opened stomach. And Barber was in just about the same state, only he seemed to at least have the ability to turn his head to look at us.
​
I think he might have tried to speak, but the only sound he seemed to be able to make was a pained whimper.
“Jesus Christ…” I said softly.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Bundy replied. He took one last look at the two dying men hanging from the trees, before moving on.
“We should put them out of their misery, sir,” I said.
​
Bundy paused, before looking back at me.
“Don’t waste the ammo, Frank,” He replied. “They’re already dead.”
“Not yet they’re not!”
“Give them time. They chose to go into the woods. They can live with the consequences… for however long that lasts.”
​
With that, he left them. If I were a more compassionate man, I would have put them out of their misery. But no. Bundy moved on and so did I.
​
He approached the water mill, before examining it. It was an old building, made of stone that had long since been overgrown by moss, and sat right on the wall that separated the Di Cesares estate from the amazon. It hardly looked secure, even if the only entrance hadn’t just been an old wooden door secured with a padlock, finding a way in wouldn’t have been difficult. And it didn’t take much for Bundy to break through that door. All he needed was a couple of well placed kicks and it swung right open.
​
Drawing his gun, Bundy strode inside and I followed him.
“The Di Cesare’s will be in the main house,” He said. “We should find a way in through the back, try and catch them off guard. Main target should be the matriarch, Bianca. Her we should prioritize keeping alive… the rest are expendable.”
​
“Much as you are, I’m sure.” A voice called from deeper in the mill, and both Bundy and I froze.
I noticed movement on the floor above us, and through the shadows, I saw a tall woman watching us. She was dressed all in black, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the intense eyes of a soldier.
​
This had to be Clementine Di Cesare.
​
Bundy aimed his pistol at her, although she only barely seemed to notice.
“Only two of you left… I’m not sure the odds are in your favor,” The woman said. Her voice was low, calm and quiet.
“Only one way to find out,” Bundy growled.
“And only one way to walk out of this place alive,” Di Cesare countered. “You can put the gun down, turn and walk away. I won’t stop you. There’s no shame in living.”
​
“All the bodies you’ve left in your wake… that’s rich,” Bundy said.
“I don’t relish what I’ve done. I simply don’t know how to do anything else,” She replied. “Think about this, Bundy. Over my lifetime, there have been countless thousands who have come to kill me. All of them are dead, but I am not. Even if you could kill me… you could not kill my sisters. Not all of them. Not before they came for you.”
“Just you, would be enough…” Bundy said, before pulling the trigger.
​
I knew he’d hit her. I knew the bullet pierced her shoulder. But that woman… she didn’t even flinch. She simply dove out of the way before he could shoot again, taking cover and avoiding his next shot.
“Frank, upstairs!” Bundy snapped, “Flush her out!”
I went, trudging up the old wooden steps with my rifle drawn. Only to see Di Cesare vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground floor as soon as I made it up there.
​
Bundy shot at her again, only to miss for a second time. I saw Di Cesare’s arm move, and heard him cry out in pain. In the low light, I could see a dagger protruding from his shoulder. He stumbled back a step, leaving himself open for only a split second.
​
That second was all it took for Di Cesare to raise her own gun and fire just one shot.
​
George Bundy hit the ground without so much as a final scream. There was just a simple hole in his skull where she had shot him.
​
I felt my heart start to race faster. My eyes settled on Bundy’s gun, and I ran for the railing, vaulting it and dropping to the ground below with a thud. Di Cesare shot at me, and I felt the bullet tear through my leg. I reached out for the fallen gun and grabbed it before turning it on Di Cesare, only to find myself staring down the barrel of her own pistol. My finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it.
​
"Kill me, and you will not see the sun tomorrow." She said, her voice still cold and calm.
“Killing you is part of the job…” I replied, but my finger still couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“And is it worth your life?” Di Cesare asked. “You fail your mission either way.”
“And die with some goddamn honor…”
“There’s no such thing as honor. There is alive and there is dead. Choose.”
​
I knew what I was supposed to choose.
​
But my hands were shaking, as I stared into the face of death. My finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
​
The gun collapsed to the floor and Di Cesare kicked it away from me, before huffing and lowering her gun.
“Do not return,” She said softly. “Or next time, I will unleash a hell upon you that will make you beg for simple traps.”
​
She picked Bundy’s gun up off the ground, and then she was gone. After I finally picked myself up off the ground, I was gone too.
​
As I walked back along the stream… I passed the corpses of the men we’d left behind. Barber and Wilson, Jack, Feng, Hernandez, and his team. The flies were already feasting on them. Animals had already torn at them. And as I looked down at their cold corpses, I knew I had made the right choice.
​
I filed my report with the Brethren. Told them that Di Cesare had wiped us out, and a few months later I quietly retired. I never looked back.
​
***
​
“You walked away from her?” Sweeney asked in disbelief, “You had her dead to rights and you walked away from her?”
“I chose to live,” I replied. “Can’t say I regret the decision either. Because of the choice I made, I met my wife and had my kids. I’ve lived the life I had because I chose not to throw it away on some vampire.”
​
Sweeney just shook his head.
“You could have gotten the first confirmed kill on a Di Cesare in two centuries, and you threw it away you fucking coward! I could execute you for that!” I noticed his hand hovering over the gun on his hip.
“You could.” I replied, before quietly unholstering the pistol I kept at my side. I aimed it at Sweeney’s head.
​
He stared at me like a slack jawed idiot.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
“W-what…?”
“Would you like to give it a try, Mr. Sweeney? Or would you like to see the sun tomorrow?”
He stared down the barrel of my gun, and I already knew what his choice would be.
​
Sweeney took a step back. I saw his hand move away from his holster, and I lowered the gun with a huff.
“Thought so,” I said.
Mr. Sweeney left me without another word.
I knew he would not return.
submitted by HeadOfSpectre to HeadOfSpectre [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 16:14 Darzean At The General Grant Car Wash in STL

At The General Grant Car Wash in STL submitted by Darzean to ShermanPosting [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 15:20 Jakimcikas First time japan travel report 04.25-05.17

Alrighty, I'll describe my first time travel in japan, what went well, what didn't go well, my overall impression of Japan. We travelled trough quite a few cities, but I'll try to keep it as short as possible as I'm not much of writer. And we've visited quite a few places, so if you'd like more details, comment and I'll go more in-depth :).
A bit about the travelling party. Me(25M) and a work colleague(26M), Lithuanians(Europe) software engineers, reasonably fit and somewhat fluent in english, Omnivores(my colleague is allergic to cheese), our height is around ±185cm.

TL;DR

Cities/islands visited

Tokyo(Shinjuku) -> Osaka -> Nara -> Kyoto -> Onomichi Islands -> Matsuyama -> Hiroshima -> Miyajima -> Kumamoto -> Aso(region) -> Fukuoka -> Nagasaki -> Nagoya -> Takayama -> Magome -> Matsumoto - > Tokyo(Chuo) -> Tokyo(Shibuya) -> Tokyo(Teito) -> Hakone.

Expenses

I was slightly more conservative with my spending so my expenses are on the cheaper side, my colleague spent quite a bit more, especially on food and booze.
Total amount spent: slightly more than 3k euros in japan + 1.1k euros flights back and forth.
EDIT: Daily food expenses: 30-40 eur or 5k-7k yen.
Daily food expenses: 3k-4k Daily travel fares(bus, metro), museums and other activities: 1k-3k
Average hotel stay: ~60euro
Food: - Breakfast - usually something from a convenience store. Chicken, power gels, chocolate, melon bread(my favourite), - Lunch - something from a convenience store or a restaurant - Dinner - restaurant usually a ramen place

Activities

Museums, castles, shrines, forests, mountains, walks around the city. We did a lot of walking, total around 400km of walking(at leasts that's what google fit shows)
Alright that's a brief summary, now for the more in-depth write up.

My key takeaways

This is it for the TL;DR part. I'll go more in-depth for the rest of the post.

Planning for the trip

We started planning the trip, where we'll go, where we'll stay, what we'll do, expenses, trains, all that you can plan was started to be planned around a month prior to the trip. We created a word doc as our itinerary, that was around 60 pages long. From what I've read on this page about you can't plan everything. Well I believe we did, we might've even over planned :D.
So we booked the following hotels: - Tokyo - Apa Hotel Higashi Shinjuku Kabukicho Tower(04.25-04.26) - Osaka - APA Hotel Namba Kita Shinsaibashi Ekimae(04.26-04.30) - Onomichi island - TOMARIGI Hostel(04.30-05.01) - Matsuyama - Hotel Patio Dogo(05.01-05.02) - Hiroshima - Wholeearth Ryokan Hiroshima(05.02-05.04) - Kumamoto - Hotel Wing International Select Kumamoto(05.04-05.08) - Nagoya - Sotetsu Fresa Inn Nagoya Shinkansenguchi(05.08-05.10) - Magoame - Magomechaya(05.10-05.11) - Matsumoto - Hotel M Matsumoto(05.11-05.12) - Tokyo - APA Hotel Ginza Kyobashi Tokyo Station Yaesu South Gate(05.14-05.17)
Extra things we bought in advance: - Water proof bags - Hiking boots and socks - Bigger backpacks - JP Rail pass, we booked the trains in advance, but honestly that wasn't necessary even during golden week - Bandages for foot blisters, medicine(for headaches, motion sickness, diarrhoea). - Ubigi eSim internet(10GB was plenty for me throughout the trip) - Sun screen(did not use and got sunburned to a point where I was shinning red) - Portable battery

The trip

Day 1(04.25)

We arrived at the Haneda aiport, exchanged some cash to yen(was at a better course than locally), printed out our JR passes(IMPORTANT TO DO SO HERE, only major stations let you print it out) and went to the metro. We took the train to Shinjuku, and walked to our hotel to check-in. We were quite tired, bought some chicken from lawson and went to explore a few places, a few drinks in golden gai district and ramen in a nearby place. Eventually we ended up at rock bar mother. Really cool place, for each drink you can request 2 songs to be played. After that back to hotel, visit the top floor onsen and sleep

Day 2(04.26)

Got up early, travelled to osaka. Left our luggage in the hotel, we were too early for a check in. We went to see Osaka castle(quite beautiful), tried takoyaki there. More city exploring, then we went check-in. After that we went to see the Umeda Sky Building in the evening(we bought the ticket in advance) very beautiful, it was very clear and beautiful. Got back to the city, got some ramen, went to the hotel and sleep.

Day 3(04.27)

Went to USJ, bought tickets(basic, no express stuff) in advance. We went there 30minutes before opening, and there was already a huge line. We went to Nintendo first, the zone looked very nice, but ride it'd say was okay'ish for me. After that the dinosaur rides, minion land, grabbed chinese food for lunch, went to the harry potter zone, at this point the lines got quite long around 1h to 1h 30min of wait time. After that we went to see Water world where they were doing a play, was really awesome, I'd say a must see even if you don't understand Japanese, the acting is very good. After that we went to Osaka aquarium(no lines, thank god), it was beautiful, cute chonks and other sea creatures.

Day 4(04.28)

Trip to Kyoto from Osaka. We went early by metro, to see the bamboo forest(7:40'ish), beautiful, few people. Walked around the park then climbed the mount a fed the monkeys(50 yen for a bag of fruits or nuts), very cute, tried petting the hand of one, didn't go well got an aggressive show of teeth. After that we visited Ryoanji temple, went to nishi market, we we're running a bit late so we took a taxi to Kiyomizudera, we saw the geish district on our way to there, looked interesting. After the temple we went to a bar and got back to Osaka and then after a bowl of ramen to our hotel.

Day 5(04.29)

We went to Nara, took this hiking track saw the deer, bought some food, did the whole bow thing then fed them. One thing to keep in mind is to crumble the cookie and give it in small pieces, otherwise you'll run out of food to give quickly. They might be very "assertive" and try to take it from you, don't be afraid, just stick your empty arm out to get some distance and that's it . They're not gonna bite you. After that we went to see the Todaiji temple, it was beautiful, the buddha statue was huge. Got back to Osaka, got some ramen, went to the hotel, scheduled to send our luggage to our next hotel and went to sleep.

Day 6(04.30)

Got up early, went to Onomichi, rented some bikes and began our cycling journey through the islands. A lot of cool bridges, very beautiful nature. We cycled to north Omishima port, where we transfered to rabbit island pet and fed the rabbits, got back and cycled to our ryokan and straight to sleeping.

Day 7(05.01)

More cycling, more cool bridges, more beautiful nature. We arrived at Imabari, returned our bikes and took the train to Matsuyama. We ate some stree food, relaxed in the open hot springs for feet. Walked around and went to sleep. To be honest I'd say this was the favorite city of the whole trip for me. I liked the vibe, the people, the food, the nature, the onsen, the layout, the architecture. In general, beautiful city.

Day 8(05.02)

Early in the morning visited a public onsen nearby, then went to see the Matsuyama castle, it was beautiful, tried the orange juice there, it was really good, got back to our hotels, got some dango. Packed our stuff, got a taxi and went to the port and took the ferry to Hiroshima. Checked in the ryokan. Took a train to Hiroshima city center, visited the castle and then the nuclear museum. Get the english audio for best experience. It took me around 2hours to walk through everything, read it and take it in. It was very nerve racking, but I'd say a must see. After that we went out to eat some Okonomiyaki, it was delicious, then back to the ryokan and sleep.

Day 9(05.03)

Went to Miyajima island first by train then transfer by ferry. It was very beautiful, the mountain hike was also fun, the view on top was amazing. When we came down from the mountain there was a low tide, so we could go near the Itsukushima shrine. Got back to Hiroshima, went to the city center for a couple of beers, got back to Ryokan and went to sleep.

Day 10(05.04)

First day of the Golden week, wouldn't say that I've noticed anything different, maybe because we were travelling to the far south of Japan - Kumamoto. This is one of those cities that I also enjoyed more than the big common ones, it looked very nice, had a beautiful castle, was not crowded as Hiroshima, Osaka or Tokyo. We rented out bikes, cycled to Honmoji park(the place near Honmoji park is god damn maze, keep you google maps always open or you will get lost) found a place to eat, visited Lafcadio Hearn House and went to our hotel and then to sleep.

Day 11(05.05)

We rentend a car and went to Aso, highly recommend renting a car here, since the public transport is not that good. The drive was very nice, we went to see active volcano crater, luckily it was not erupting, so we were allowed to get close. Then we went around and climbed the other inactive mountain caps. Climbing that was one of the most fun hikes I've had. It was very windy, you could barely see past 5 meters anywhere, because of the fog. There was no smell of sulfur, so it was safe. We visited Mt. Nakadake, Mt. Takadake, overall the place looked like Mordor, the vibes, the weather everything. After that we visited Ayugaeno Falls, the ravines and everything was just majectic. After that we got back to Kumamoto, gave back the car and went somewhere to eat. Car rental cost around ~7k yen in total. So I'd say a good price. After eating, we went to our hotel and then to sleep.

Day 12(05.06)

We went to Fukuoka, by train, walked around the city, visited Tochoji temple, Fukuoka castle ruins, Ohori park and explored the huge ravine type shopping mall. Went to the science museum(big mistake, it's for kids...). After that we tried Ichiran ramen(originated in Fukuoka so we thought it be better). Was the same as everywhere else. It was rainy so we got back pretty early to our hotel and went to sleep.

Day 13(05.07)

We went to Nagasaki, by train, visited the atomic bomb museum, it was very interesting, just as good as the one in Hiroshima. We took a boat ride to see Gunkanjima, though we couldn't get on the island, because of the weather, it was still very interesting to see and hear the history of the island. Explored the Dutch district, walked around the shops, tried some whale meat. It was raining the whole day, so we also got back quite early and went to sleep.

Day 14(05.08)

We got up early and went got straight to the train station, and caught the train to Nagoya. The longest train ride by far. We arrived at Nagoya, checked in our hotel, went to the city center, visited the castle, it was very beautiful, then we wanted to explore the abandoned tunnel near Aichi. Apparently it was closed, we decided we're going to enter through the exit, like rascals, but apparently after we circled around there was a police officer that was guarding traffic through the bridge and wouldn't let us through. So our trip ended there. After comming back to Nagoya we visited the sky scrapper, it had interesting installations on the windows. We had our stay got back to hotel and went to sleep.

Day 15(05.09)

We went to Takayama, by train, one of the most scenic train rides so far. We strolled around the city center, visited the early morning market, bought some souvenirs, tried some white strawberries, mushroom tee and other local cuisine. Visited Takayama Showa Museum, which was 10/10. You could touch almost everything, the museum gave a great vibe, it was like you were in a house of a family that lived there. There was also an old nintendo with mario kart that you could play, put on a old yukata and take photos. Play pachinko(no money needed), watch an old-school movie. We visited a few sake tasting places, I've found a few flavours that I liked. After that back to Nagoya, eat ramen and sleep.

Day 16(05.10)

We sent out our luggage to Matsumoto, caught a train to Nagiso and then hiked the Nakasendo trail to Tsumago and then Magome where we checked in and stayed at the local ryokan. The hike was very nice and relaxing one of the easier hikes I've had, the places we saw we're quite old and beautiful. At ryokan we met people one American and one from Germany, they had a guitar so we chatted a bit, played the guitar and had a few beers. The dinner at ryokan was amazing, looked very traditional Japanese dinner. Was also very tasty, would definitely recommend this place. After that we went to sleep.

Day 17-19(05.11)

Got up early and took a bus to Nakatsugawa Eki-mae station where we travelled to Matsumoto. We left our bags and went to the RubyKaigi conference. Overall good conference, I've learned somethings, but most importantly I've had bit of time to rest and catch up on some sleep, since we weren't exploring new cities. So overall the following 3 days were wake up -> breakfast -> conference -> lunch -> conference -> drinks -> dinner -> sleep.

Day 20(05.14)

Slept in, had breakfast and travelled to Tokyo by train. Left our luggage at the hotel and moved on to explore the Chou region. Walked around the Ginza, Imperial palace, Yasukuni shrine and went to check in. After that it was getting dark, so travelled to Akihabara to experience the anime night life, was quite bright and interesting. Though the amount of requests to visit a maid cafe was too damn high. If your planning to buy a PS5, a new GPU or Nintendo switch, this could be the place, I saw PS5 with two controllers for 60k yen, with a 10% tax refund that is around 370 euros. After some exploration, got back to our hotel and went to sleep.

Day 21(05.15)

This was our Hakone day trip, we bought the 3 day pass for it, so we could use the train, bus, ropeway and boat. Was worth it, even for one day. We climbed Mt. Kintoki, thankfully the weather was great and we could see Fuji. The climb was very nice, the view was amazing, the weather was great, no bears to be seen. After climbing down, we played some golf that was near there. Travelled back to the station were we used the rope-way to get around the mountains, the view was just majestic, we saw the sulfur pits, the stench was, well strong to say the least, but overall enjoyed the experience. We didn't make it time to the boat, so we had to travel back by bus, which wasn't so bad, since the scenery was amazing.

Day 22(05.16)

Explored more Tokyo, so we went to Teito district, went to the Ueno zoo, National science museum. After that we went to Kaminarimon gate, Asakusa shrine and moved to Shibuya next. There we went to the Yoyogi park, Meiji Jingu shrine, paid our respects to Hachiko statue. The last activity was to visit TeamLabs Planets, which were amazing, one most interesting experiences, not gonna spoil any details, overall great experience, would do it again. As it was getting late we got back to Shibuya, walked around more, had a drink and went back to our hotel.

Day 23(05.17)

Last day in Japan was spent buying souvenirs, snacks and other stuff to bring back home. Packing our luggage, to accommodate for the extras, getting to Haneda airport and back to Lithuania.
I'm very happy I had the opportunity to go on such a trip, I enjoyed it a lot even though, I'm quite the couch potato so 3 weeks is a bit much for me, but nonetheless, wouldn't change a thing.
submitted by Jakimcikas to JapanTravel [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 15:16 Additional-Cry-9974 One day in St Louis

Hi!
My husband and I are driving to St. Louis next Friday for a concert. We’ve never been before and are excited to explore.
We are staying at Union Station Hotel.
I’m looking for some recommendations on things to do during the day/afternoon, some good vibey restaurants, and maybe a bar or two near the hotel (ish). We are super open with cuisine, so any recs we welcome!
Our venue is the Hollywood Casino amphitheater so we’ll likely spend most of our time downtown by our hotel, unless anyone knows of anything near the concert.
Thank you so much!
ETA: Y’all were so helpful!! Thank you so much for these great recommendations, everyone! We are excited and will be sure to check out as many of these spots as possible :)
submitted by Additional-Cry-9974 to StLouis [link] [comments]

2023.06.03 13:03 FelicitySmoak_ On This Day In Michael Jackson HIStory - June 3rd

On This Day In Michael Jackson HIStory - June 3rd
1972 - "I Wanna Be Where You Are" by Michael enters the Billboard US Hot Soul Singles Chart, where it will make a 12 week run for the #2 poisiton.
1972 - "Got To Be There", the 1st solo album by Michael, enters the UK's Top 50 albums chart, where it will peak at #37 during a fiveweek run.
1973 - "Lookin' Through the Windows" by The Jackson 5 on the Motown label hits the Billboard music charts at #94, where it peaks at #7. It remains on the chart for 33 weeks.
1979 - The Jackson perform their Destiny tour at Carolina Coliseum in Columbia, South Carolina. They give a press interview at the Carolina Inn
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1990- Michael collapses while dancing at his Westwood condo known as 'The Hideout'. He is taken to St John Hospital of Los Angeles around 9pm where he is treated for chest pains.
He gets visits from the whole Jackson family (except LaToya, who sends him a dozen black roses) .Elizabeth Taylor also visits him. She had been in the hospital undergoing treatment for a near fatal bout of pneumonia since mid April.
“According to his physician, he is in stable condition and appropriate tests are being conducted", nursing officials said in a prepared statement.
1992- At the Tavern On The Green in New York City, the One To One award is given to Michael by the Operation One to One organization in charge with creating better living standards for young people, for efforts committed to helping economically disadvantaged youth. Michael attends the Operation One To One Honors dinner with friends Elizabeth Taylor and Donald Trump.
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1992 - Crystal Cartier filed a $40 million federal lawsuit against Michael Jackson, Sony Music Entertainment, MJJ Productions and Epic Records. She alleged that she originally wrote and recorded "Dangerous."
In February of 1994, a Denver Federal court jury ruled in Michael's favor
1995 - The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce rejects Michael's application to cover up the famous 'Hollywood' sign with the word 'HIStory' to promote his new compilation album
1997 - Michael Jackson plays the Mungersdorfer (now RheinEnergieStadionStadium) in Cologne, Germany, to an audience of 60,000 on the HIStory World Tour
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2005 - Trial Day 67
Michael goes to court with Katherine, Joe, Janet and LaToya.
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Michael was greeted outside court by hundreds of chanting fans. He arrived with his parents and his famous siblings - Janet, LaToya, Jermaine, Tito and Randy. They waved to the fans chants of “Michael is Innocent!”
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Defense attorneys completed their closing arguments, labeling the Arvizo family liars and con artists trying to pull “the biggest con of their careers”.
"They are trying to take advantage of Michael Jackson," said impassioned defense attorney Thomas Mesereau. "They are trying to profit from Michael Jackson. They think they have pulled it off. They are just waiting for one thing - your verdict."
"What they are trying to do to Michael Jackson is so harmful, so brutal, so devastating if you have any reasonable doubt about the double-talk, the lies, its over. You must acquit Michael Jackson," he told the 12 jurors.
Mesereau spoke about the American system of justice and said, "We have the best system in the world and ladies and gentlemen I'm begging you to honor the system. You must acquit him."
He accused prosecutors of trying to "dirty up Michael" because they lack the evidence to prove their case.
"The witnesses are preposterous, the perjury is everywhere," Mesereau declared. "None of it works. The only thing they've had is to throw dirt all over the place and hope it sticks."
He added: "If you look in your hearts do you believe Michael Jackson is evil in that way? Is it even possible? It really is not."
Mesereau then played excerpts from a video in which Jackson denies any sexual impropriety and said that he had “never been betrayed or deceived by children.”
The defense attorney conceded that Jackson had been lax with his money and had let the wrong people into his circle. But, he said, the singer was not the “monster” the prosecution were trying to depict and that he was not guilty of any crime.
Afterwards, prosecutor Ron Zonen delivered a brief rebuttal. He sought to answer the question of Jackson’s motivation for the crime asking, "Why would Mr. Jackson do it? Because he could This child was in love with him. This child would do anything he said."
Zonen reminded jurors of the past allegations made against Jackson saying that this was necessary in order to “see the total picture”. He claimed that Jackson was “in love” with his 1993 accuser and added that the current accuser is a “clone” of the boy in that case.
After both sides rested for the last time, Judge Rodney Melville ordered the eight women and four men on the jury to begin their deliberations. He gave them a 98-page book of instructions.
The Judge told Jackson that he could stay at Neverland during the proceedings but requested that the attorneys remain within 10 minutes of the courthouse in case the jurors had any questions.
These deliberations are the final stage of an ordeal that began 14 weeks ago. During this time the jury has heard testimony from over 130 witnesses.
A verdict was expected early next week.
Court Transcript
While Jury deliberations take place, the whole Jackson family waits for the verdict at Neverland.
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2008 - Michael has dinner with Thomas Barrack Jr, chairman and CEO of Colony Capital LLC, at the Las Vegas Hilton's Verona Sky Villa.
2009 - Michael goes to Culver Studios with Prince, Paris & Kenny Ortega, where he shoots “The Drill” 3D
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He also, once again, goes to Dr Klein’s in Beverly Hills.
2013 - Jackson v AEG Trial Day 22
No Jackson family member was at the courthouse.
Paul Gongaware
AEG cross
Putnam asked Gongaware if MJ was comfortable with all the show dates. "Yes, I went through all of the dates with him," Gongaware said. Bugzee, the tour manager, had a big calendar on the walls, Gongaware explained, saying they changed the dates of the shows four times. The jury was shown an email in which Gongaware worked with a staffer to create a calendar to show Jackson. He wanted colors changed. He wanted the calendar to be changed so that it reflected Jackson's show dates and off days differently. Gongaware email:
Figure it out so it looks like he's not working so much
As to the email, Putnam asked if he was trying to fool Michael:
"No, I was trying to make it clear, trying to get it just the way I wanted it," Gongaware responded.
After changing 4 show dates Gongaware said Michael was comfortable with it. He would do 8 shows in July, 10 in August, 9 in September. There would be no shows in October, November and December, resuming with 10 shows in January, 10 in February and three in March. No back-to-back shows. Gongaware said the O2 Arena had a previous commitment in Oct-Dec of 2009 and they could not have the concerts.
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Putnam: "Was this a rigorous schedule?"
Gongaware: "No, not at all"
Gongaware recalled that on the HIStory tour they did 10-12 shows per month, from country to country, but this one would stay in London only. Gongaware said he wasn't concerned with Michael's age. "He seemed great to me," he said, and this was stationary show, didn't have to travel.
Gongaware:
The reason Michael wanted to delay the 1st show was he wanted more time to rehearse in the O2 Arena where the show would take place.
He said Michael and Kenny Ortega would decide the rehearsal schedule. Gongaware explained Michael didn't have to attend rehearsals, since it was not part of his deal. He said they never require an artist to rehearse. "I didn't have any expectation," Gongaware said regarding Michael rehearsing. He said he's never seen a requirement for a musicial artist to rehearse & that during the HIStory tour, Michael didn't rehearse but nailed it. "When it was game time, he would show up," Gongaware explained. For instance, Gongaware cited an outdoor concert in Bangkok in high heat, humidity.
As to the email Gongaware wrote about calling Michael lazy, he said he used unfortunate choices of words, Michael didn't like to rehearse.
Talking about the elements of the show, Gongaware described what they wanted to do for the opening of the show. He said Michael would be dressed up in a LED suit, like a television, flashing on him brief movie about things that happened in history. Michael would be lowered down onto the stage. He called the LED suit a "Moon man" suit, but Ortega called it "Light man." Putnam showed a presentation of how the LED suit idea would work. Footage is not on This Is It documentary because it was early stages of prep. Gongaware said the 1st idea was to make Michael float from the audience, but they couldn't make it work. So they decided to lower him down onto the stage. Gongaware said the big screen on the back of the stage was 3D capable. The audience would be given glasses when they entered the show. The 3D songs would be Thriller, Earth Song and Smooth Criminal. "He wanted to do biggest, best show ever, live show," Gongaware said
Putnam showed email chain from Ortega to Gongaware asking to make a deal with choreographer Travis Payne. Answer from Gongaware:
This is not AEG money, it's Michael's money so it takes a lot of time to get approvals
Defendants were trying to establish a pattern that all the money spent was actually Michael's money, not AEG's, just like with Dr. Murray
At one point Gongaware said he learned from Michael about a doctor named Murray. "He came to me and said he wanted his personal doctor on the tour". Gongaware said he suggested to Michael to get a licensed doctor in London who would know the lay of the land, in case of need. "This is the machine, we have to take care of the machine. I want Conrad," Gongaware said Michael responded. I think what he meant was his brain could create it but his body had to deliver the show every night
​
Putnam: "Were you surprised he wanted to take his doctor on tour?"
Gongaware: "No"
Putnam: "Why not?"
Gongaware: "He had doctors before"
Gongaware said other artists take doctors as well, so he was not the only one and it didn't surprise him. Gongaware said he's been on tour before where an artist had chiropractors, but couldn't remember being in one with a doctor
Putnam: "Did you worry Michael might have a health issue?"
Gongaware: "No"
Putnam: "Why not?"
Gongaware: "He seemed fine to me, had a physical and passed"
Gongaware said the suggestion for a London doctor was due to the cost; paying a doctor full time was much more expensive than hiring a local doctor. Gongaware said Dr. Murray treated Michael for about three years before 2009. He knew the doctor was from Las Vegas but said he was in LA. Gongaware said he then called Dr. Murray to work out a deal. Gongaware testified he didn't have Michael's direct phone number, would go through Michael Amir Williams, his personal assistant, to reach him. Gongaware called Murray on behalf of Michael saying the singer wanted to take him to London. "What do you want to be paid for that," Gongaware asked. Gongaware said he thought Dr. Murray was expecting his call and was aware of the desire to take him on tour. "He said he would need $5 million," Gongaware recalled. "He said he has 4 clinics to close, would lay off people, needs $5 million for that." Asked by Putnam if Murray's price was reasonable: "It was ridiculous," Gongaware said about the amount asked. "It was a lot of money for something like that and Michael could not afford it." Gongaware said he responded that it wasn't going to work" He said this was the first time he spoke with Dr. Murray. After that, Gongaware said he told Michael Amir and Randy Phillips what the doctor had asked. He also told Frank DiLeo. Gongaware said a lot of people who wanted to work for MJ asked for huge sums of money, thinking he had a lot.
Putnam: "Would you be doing this if Michael had not asked you?"
Gongaware: "No"
Putnam: "Did you contemplate bringing a doctor on tour?"
Gongaware: "I didn't think he needed one, we didn't have one in History, he was fine"
"He was Michael's doctor, Michael wanted him. That was it," Gongaware said.
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Putnam:" Did you think about checking the doctor?"
Gongaware: "No"
Putnam: "Why not?"
Gongaware: "He was Michael's doctor"
" I'm not going to tell Michael Jackson who his doctor should be," Gongaware explained. "It wasn't my place to say who his doctor was going to be," Gongaware said. "It was his decision."
Gongaware said he doesn't think a doctor's financial situation has anything to do with being an ethical doctor. Gongaware said it never crossed his mind to either do a background check on Dr. Murray or to suggest to anyone to do it. "I just expect doctors to be ethical, the financial side of their lives shouldn't have an impact on their medical decision," Gongaware opined.
Gongaware said he never did a background check on anyone he hired and had he done one on Dr. Murray, it would've been out of the ordinary.
He also said he never considered performing background checks on Jackson's makeup artist, a choreographer who worked one-on-one with the singer or Kenny Ortega, the tour's director. "I didn't see the need for it," he said.
Dr. Finkelstein, a friend of Gongaware, said a doctor should charge $10,000 a month for the tour work. But Dr. Finkelstein would've done it for free, since he was on the Dangerous tour before and had a lot of fun
The second call about Dr. Murray came from Michael Amir Williams saying they were going to need to get a deal done for the doctor. Gongaware said he heard Michael in the car saying "offer 150, offer 150." Gongaware understood that to be $150k/month. Gongaware called Dr. Murray, said he was authorized to offer him $150k a month. He said Dr. Murray responded that he couldn't do it for that. Gongaware told him the offer came directly from the artist and Dr. Murray responded: "I'll take it" Gongaware said Michael approved the amount of compensation. "Michael told me offer 150," Gongaware recalled. "And that's what I did." Gongaware inquired from Dr. Murray how he would get a license in London and the doctor told him not to worry about it. They talked about Dr. Murray's request for a house in London, and the doctor said he would need a three bedroom house. Gongaware recalled Dr. Murray saying he would probably need an assistant and some equipment, but no details were given at this point. After the call, Gongaware said he let Michael Amir Williams know what the result was in a May 6th email: Done at 150k per month, per MJ. He needs about 10 days to wind down his practice then he will be full time
Asked why he had negotiated with Murray, the AEG executive replied that he was "instructed to by Michael Jackson." Gongaware said there was no other reason for him to deal with the doctor. Marvin Putnam asked Gongaware why he didn't tell Jackson he couldn't take Murray on tour with him."Because he could if he wanted," Gongaware said.
Gongaware said he passed Dr. Murray on to Timm Wooley, never had any other conversation with Dr. Murray about him possibly going to London.
Putnam: "Do you have any understanding as to whether a contract with Dr. Murray was executed?"
Gongaware: "One never was"
Putnam: "Did AEG pay Dr. Murray any kind of money?"
Gongaware: "No"
Gongaware said Michael was ultimately responsible for his own health:
"I think everyone is responsible for their own health and well being. He was a grown man with the capability to make decisions regarding his health and medical care"
Putnam showed Gongaware a frame from the This Is It film in which Jackson's manager, Frank Dileo, was sitting in on dancer auditions. Dancers auditions took place at the Nokia Theater on April 13, 14 & 15. Michael attended the last day and made the final decision, Gongaware said. He said Ortega wanted to film the audition to use fresh footage on michaeljacksonlive.com. The cost for crew to shoot the audition was very high, so Gongaware bought a couple of cameras and used his own crew to shoot the rehearsals. He said he wasn't sure what he would use the video for, but thought the website would be a good platform.
Gongaware said during the period at Center Staging, Michael was good, engaging, didn't think there were any health issues or was using drugs
Gongaware said the media in the UK was going wild with gossip about Michael Jackson. "They just lie about things." The Sun claimed Michael had skin cancer on his chest. "It was sport over in London," Gongaware said about stories on tabloids. Gongaware testified about emails in which UK press agents working on This Is It sent him tabloid reports on Michael's health. Gongaware said he urged the press agents not to respond. He wanted Jackson's performance to speak for itself & silence skeptics.
Gongaware on 5/27/09:
The Kid is healthy and rehearsing every day. He was still there at dance rehearsals at 9pm last night when I left. Our redemption will be when he does his shows, that makes all of this build up so damn sweet. We don't have to sell tickets, so we can just sit back and prove them wrong by just doing it.
Gongaware said he was not concerned
"If there was something going on, if he had cancer, we would've heard about it."
Michael Jackson rehearsal venues:
  • Mar 28- Center Staging
  • May 27- Forum June 23 - Staples Center
  • July 13 - O2 Arena
Putnam also asked Gongaware about an incident Karen Faye testified about, that she heard him yelling at Michael's assistant one day. The incident occurred while This Is It rehearsals were happening at The Forum in LA. Faye claimed she heard Gongaware yelling about Jackson being late to a rehearsal and told his assistant to get him there. "Never, never happened," Gongaware said, shaking his head.
Putnam went through a chain of emails about tabloid reports in the UK regarding Michael. In one, it said Michael had asked AEG to reduce the number of shows by half. Gongaware said that such a discussion never happened. Gongaware testified he woke up to one gossip headline pretty much every day. His idea was simply to ignore the tabloids. "An amazing show would be the answer", Gongaware said
Gongaware on 6/5/09 in response to Sunday Mirror Query:
"We can only make this work, of course, if MJ puts on the best show of his life. I'm here to tell you that be will. I have seen it for myself. Last night he ran 9 songs with full band, singers and dancers. Sang every one, he was amazing, captivating, riveting. And he's just getting started. Taking it one step further. When people realize that bulls**t the press has been, they will be in receptive mood for the truth Hey look. No skin cancer. He's just a good dad, loving raising his kids. His art and his craft are paramount. A gentle, loving man who does care about people
"The shows were going to be spectacular," Gongaware said. Putnam showed a clip of Michael in front of a green screen with 11 dancers, who would become 11,000. Gongaware said Michael was great at this point
Regarding email Phillips sent Gongaware directing to remove Michael's "skeletal" scenes Gongaware said he didn't take anything out of the movie.
Putnam: "Did you remove anything from the movie?"
Gongaware: "No"
Putnam showed a clip from This Is It with the making of "Thriller 3D" and Jackson wearing red jacket.
Putnam: "Did you try to alter in anyway how Mr. Jackson looked, appeared?"
Gongaware: "No"
Gongaware said he didn't remember any of the footage been removed because of how Michael looked. "We just let the footage speak for itself"
The mini-movie of "Earth Song" a bulldozer would come out from a ramp in center stage.
Putnam: "A real bulldozer?"
Gongaware: "I wish, it would've been cheaper, but it would have crushed our ramps"
Gongaware said they had to build the bulldozer like a prop. It would appear at the end of the song on stage. "I think the live audience would be just captivated by it," Gongaware said about the little girl running after the last plant on Earth song.
End of the show would be 3D animation. An airplane taxis up, door opens, Michael entered the plane. The airplane door closes, Michael would actually take an elevator down and out of the building, but the plane would take off over the audience
Gongaware said he didn't know if anyone was responsible for Michael's nourishment. Tour would be demanding and exhausting
Gongaware said he met Dr. Murray once at MJ's Carolwood house and ran into him at The Forum during rehearsal. There was a meeting scheduled to discuss Michael's nutrition with Randy Phillips, Kenny Ortega, Dr. Murray, Michael, Gongaware and DiLeo.
Putnam: "Do you recall anyone in that meeting ever telling Dr. Murray how he should be treating Michael?"
Gongaware: "No"
Gongaware said he didn't have any medical training and wasn't qualified to tell Conrad Murray how to treat Jackson
Gongaware said neither Dr. Murray nor Michael talked about the treatment he was receiving. The meeting was about nutrition & vitamin therapy. Gongaware said he had no idea Dr. Murray was giving Michael Propofol and first heard of the anesthetic after Michael died. Gongaware said Dr. Murray was really engaged in the meeting, seemed like a very intelligent guy and wanted to take care of Michael very much. This was the first time Gongaware met with Dr. Murray. He said there were no signs of Michael being poorly treated by the doctor. "Michael was engaged in the meeting, attentive, seemed happy we were having this meeting," Gongaware opined. "He's a doctor, he'd know better than anybody how to treat his patient," Gongaware said about Dr. Murray.
As to Gongaware's email saying AEG, not Michael, paid Dr Murray he said he was mistaken. "We wouldn't pay his salary, we'd advance Michael's money". Gongaware said he didn't remember writing/receiving the email, but never denied he did it.
As to Michael being habitually late, Gongaware said the singer worked on his own schedule, did things his way
Gongaware said his understanding was that Michael hired a trainer of his choice, Louis (Lou) Ferrigno: "I made the deal with him (Ferrigno). He was supposed to be paid a certain amount of money per session" He didn't elaborate on fee, how many times he worked with Michael. Putnam showed an email from Travis Payne, he suggested a massage chair to be put in Michael's dressing room.
As to Bugzee's email saying MJ needed cheeseburgers, brats and beers, Gongaware said Bugzee was joking, Bugzee cared very much for Michael. Gongaware testified he didn't recall having any concern about Michael's health/using painkillers as of Monday 6/15/09, 10 days prior to his death
Gongaware was asked about several emails that have been shown before, including messages related to MJ missing rehearsal on June 19, 2009. The executive was on the East Coast for a family wedding, but responded to one message questioning why Murray wasn't at rehearsal. Gongaware email:
Take the doctor with you. Why wasn't he there last night?
He then explained his thinking to the jury. Gongaware:
If his patient is having a problem and he's sick, and he's his only patient, it seemed like he should be there
Gongaware said on 6/19/09, he was out of town. "This is the day Michael had chills at rehearsal and was apparently sick," Gongaware recalled. "If the meeting was going to be about what happened that night, the doctor should be there," Gongaware said.
Gongaware said he believed Michael wanted to go on tour. He said he doesn't remember anyone talking about pulling the plug on the shows.
Putnam: "Did anyone tell you at this point that Michael needed a drug addiction specialist?"
Gongaware: "No"
Putnam: "Did anyone tell you they were concerned with the care Dr. Murray was giving to Michael?"
Gongaware: "No"
Gongaware said that on 6/20/09 he did not think Michael's health was deteriorating.
With last questions of the day, Putnam asked Gongaware if he was concerned about Jackson's well-being. He said "Yes"
Court Transcript
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2023.06.03 12:48 estoops Dear Cincinnatians

Hi guys!
Kansas Citian here who just spent Tuesday night through Friday morning in your city and just wanted to say what a great time I had!
I was there for a work trip so I wasn't able to be a full on tourist, but your city, much like Kansas City, is very underrated I must say! When I found out I was going to Cincinnati, I wasn't dreading it by any means, but it wasn't like "oh I get to go to Hawaii/NYC/Miami!" Basically I had not much knowledge on Cincinnati either way so I just felt neutral about it, I knew it straddled the Ohio river into Kentucky and that you had the Bengals and Reds.
However, I ended up being super happy I got to experience a place I probably wouldn't have ever thought to go!
For one, the view of the skyline suddenly appearing as I came from the south on 71 was so pretty! I'm a sucker for skylines so it was so cool how I was just driving along and then suddenly "boom" there was the heart of the city in plain view!
I also went to the Cincinnati art museum (I'm cheap and told myself I'd only go do things that are free) and was super impressed. Reminded me a lot of the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City.
I also walked across the john roebling bridge cuz i also love bridges and found out it served as inspiration for the brooklyn bridge! before i knew that i was thinking, "this feels very brookly bridge-esque."
Although I did not catch any games I loved how the Bengals and Reds stadiums were right in the middle of downtown. One thing I hate about Kansas City (that st louis does a lot better but dont tell them) is how the sports stadiums are out in the ugly suburbs 20 minutes from downtown!
Lastly, and most importantly, someone I was with REALLY wanted to try graters ice cream on thursday night (i dont personally like ice cream, like at all, i know im weird) because they said it was famous. So we drove downtown and OMG!
It did take us about 20 minutes to find a free parking spot, but after that we were right by fountain square and apparently salsa night was going on that night. It looked like so much fun! I saw people of ever age, gender, race, etc dancing along to the instructions that the ladies were giving everyone. I believe they said it had been going on for 16 years and also that different nights of the week were different genres.
Lastly, Cincinnati in general felt very tree-covered to me, it reminded me of the ozarks (where im from). Rolling hills of trees. I also saw a lot of cute areas downtown and near my hotel that I didn’t actually explore but that I felt looked really cool.
Anyways, 10/10 recommend! Almost bought a Reds hat even though I’m a Boston fan!
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2023.06.03 09:17 Pinto_RED_Window13 Izuku midoriya (MHA) Vs sisyphus prime (ultrakill)

Scene: A ruined city in the future, where machines have taken over. Sisyphus Prime, a glowing humanoid with a sun-like head, emerges from a giant metal tower. He looks around and sees Izuku Midoriya, a green-haired boy wearing a blue and white hero costume, standing on a rooftop.
Sisyphus Prime: So you are the one who has been causing trouble for my brethren. You have some nerve to challenge me, weapon.
Izuku Midoriya: I'm not a weapon, I'm a hero! And I'm here to stop you from destroying this world!
Sisyphus Prime: A hero? Ha! You are nothing but a weak and foolish human. You have no idea what you are up against. I am Sisyphus Prime, the ultimate fusion of flesh and metal. I have the power of the sun in my hands. And I will use it to burn you to ashes!
Izuku Midoriya: Don't underestimate me! I have the power of One For All, the quirk that was passed down to me by All Might, the greatest hero of all time! And I will use it to protect this world!
Sisyphus Prime: Enough talk. Let's see what you can do.
The fight begins. Sisyphus Prime teleports behind Izuku and tries to punch him, but Izuku dodges and kicks him in the chest. Sisyphus Prime staggers back and summons an explosion near Izuku, but Izuku jumps away and fires a Delaware Smash at him. Sisyphus Prime blocks it with his arm and teleports again, this time above Izuku. He stomps on the ground, creating a shockwave that knocks Izuku off balance. Sisyphus Prime then grabs Izuku by the neck and lifts him up.
Sisyphus Prime: You are pathetic. You can't even scratch me. Is this the best you can do?
Izuku Midoriya: N-no... I can do more... I can do much more!
Izuku activates his Full Cowl mode, increasing his strength and speed. He breaks free from Sisyphus Prime's grip and punches him in the face. Sisyphus Prime reels back and drops Izuku. Izuku then uses his Blackwhip quirk to grab Sisyphus Prime's leg and pull him down. He then runs towards him and unleashes a St. Louis Smash on his head. Sisyphus Prime falls to the ground, bleeding from his nose and mouth.
Izuku Midoriya: How do you like that? That's the power of One For All!
Sisyphus Prime: Grrr... You... You made me bleed... You made me feel pain... How dare you...
Sisyphus Prime gets up and glares at Izuku with rage in his eyes. He then activates his second phase, growing long hair and a beard and becoming more bloodstained. He also becomes faster and stronger than before.
Sisyphus Prime: You have awakened my true form. You have sealed your fate. Now you will face my wrath!
Sisyphus Prime charges at Izuku with incredible speed and fury. He unleashes a barrage of punches and kicks that Izuku barely manages to block or dodge. He then grabs Izuku by the arm and throws him into a building. He follows him and slams him into a wall. He then raises his fist and prepares to deliver the final blow.
Sisyphus Prime: This is the end for you, weapon. Say goodbye to this world!
Izuku Midoriya: No... This is not the end... I won't give up... I won't let you win...
Izuku activates his 100% mode, using all of his power at once. He pushes Sisyphus Prime away and punches him in the stomach with all his might. Sisyphus Prime coughs up blood and flies back into the tower he came from. The tower explodes in a huge blast of light that engulfs both of them.
The scene fades to black.
The end
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2023.06.03 04:23 WrestlerRabbit Some questions about biking in USA

Hi all, Currently planning to go from St Louis to SF along the TransAmerica and pacific coast route starting in 8 days. Just have some quick questions for those who’ve done longer tours in the US
  1. Where do you put your bicycle when you are at a hotel? I am planning to stay at one once a week or so, do they just permit you to take it into your room? If not where do you secure it? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Bike rack at a hotel.
  2. Best ways to fill up water along the TransAmerica - city/park water, buying at grocery to gas store, how did you all do it?
  3. Where do you poop when riding through private lands? I figure you can just bury it when riding through national forest, but say you are riding through long stretches of farmland/ranchland, where do you go?
Thanks for any help!
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2023.06.02 22:44 Highlandillinois 21 looking for older. Am near St. Louis but am okay with an online or in person relationship. Am 6 foot 170, a bottom, up for anything… hmu!

The older the better! Daddies really turn me on. Looking to be exclusive
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